The Sea of Statues
by c2t2
Summary: Hidden from the world by the mists of the Florian Triangle, a mountain of treasure looms over a poisonous island. It's almost too easy. And what's with all the statues? (Post Water 7)
1. Prologue

Title: The Sea of Statues - Prologue  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: T-ish for cursing and Franky  
Chapter Summary: After Leaving Water 7, the Strawhat Pirates explore their new ship.  
Info on things like eventual shipping will be posted at my Squizbee Livejournal

The Thousand Sunny was full of surprises.

The Strawhat Pirates were busy exploring their new ship as they sailed towards the Florian Triangle. It was clearly Franky's Dream Ship - a lifetime of inventions and ideas crammed inside. Every nook and cranny seemed to have some kind of trick or hidden device.

One member of the crew was less than happy with Franky's ingenuity. Zoro was annoyed that the rooms _moved around_, seemingly swapping places at random. This was intensely frustrating and after the aquarium and the kitchen switched places six times in a row, Zoro was getting fed up with blocking Sanji's kicks at his head.

When he finally made it back out on deck, Zoro decided to go to and _stay in_ the only room that seemed to stay put. Other directions changed around all the time based which way you faced and where the stars were and what time of day it was and other such nonsense, but one direction never changed: up was always up.

Well, sometimes it was also north, but that just made things confusing again.

Since even Franky couldn't mess with The Law of Up, Zoro reached the crow's nest – and more importantly, the gym – on his first try.

Now as annoying as the moving rooms had been, even Zoro wasn't immune to the excitement and the air of exploration on the ship, leading to him poking around his new weight room. All of the buttons and levers seemed to be shielded and out of the way enough that they wouldn't be triggered by accident. That was good. It wouldn't do to take a wrong step during training and activate some kind of whirling chainsaw death machine.

Huh. On second thought, that might be okay. It would keep his reflexes and awareness sharp, anyway. Maybe he'd talk to Franky about it sometime.

Zoro was currently investigating the seating that stretched around the edges of the room. What had first appeared to be an extended couch were actually separate seats placed so closely together that they looked like a single unit. The chairs were all the same color, but many of them seemed to be made of different materials. Zoro was completely clueless about such things and couldn't identify anything beyond the labels of "cloth" and "some other kind of cloth" and "not cloth" and "something else that's not cloth" and "maybe leather?" – so that wasn't at all interesting.

More intriguing were the buttons hidden in the small gaps between the chairs. All of the seats seemed to have at least one, and Zoro – not usually prone to curiosity – decided to press a few of them.

Zoro poked the first button and (no he _did not_ jump) a footrest shot out with a loud clunk. Pressing the button again returned the seat to normal.

That was disappointing. Was it the same for all of them?

Zoro pushed the button on the next seat with considerably less caution and the seat reclined. The next one both the back reclined and a footrest shot up. The next one raised some armrests. Zoro snorted. Boring.

The next seat was more interesting, unfolding into a sparse but perfectly comfortable-looking cot. Zoro smirked, he had a feeling the nap-prone members of the crew might get some use out of that one. A few of their more uptight nakama might not like such a temptation so easily available during watch, but they needed to loosen up.

The next button turned the seat into something resembling the cot, but it had a lot of straps and a headrest and… were those wheels? Zoro cocked his head and took a few moments before he realized…

_A gurney?_ Zoro couldn't suppress an eyebrow spasm. Shouldn't that be in Chopper's infirmary?

Whatever. The button on the next seat raised the armrests, and started… vibrating. What.

Not just vibrating, something under the backrest seemed to be _moving_. It was nearly a full minute before Zoro realized: _massage chair_.

Superficial massage like that could only feel nice, not substantially aid muscle recovery. It seemed a little decadent, but Zoro wasn't going to judge. He moved on to the next seat and pushed the next button, completely unprepared for the chair to _explode_ out of place, rocketing up to smash into the ceiling and fall to the ground with a loud clatter.

…Okay NOW he was going to judge. Who in the fuck installs an _ejector seat_ in an enclosed room? Zoro nervously patted down the hairs on the back of his neck and moved on to the next seat while quietly adjusting his opinion of Franky's sanity.

The next seat turned into a… lumpy thing; one smooth cushion over two mounds. One lump rose to about waist height and the other about knee-high. Zoro had no idea what it was. It might be kind of comfy to lounge on; maybe it was a weird couch? He continued on.

He recognized the next one almost right away based on his many years of overtraining. But he had never seen one so elaborate before. It was a massage table. But this massage table had a few frills – it could stretch to accommodate for a variety of body lengths, and there were separate rests for all the limbs, adjustable to various positions and heights. That would be useful. Moving into different positions helped in getting to the sore muscle in just the right way, which significantly sped up recovery. Zoro nodded in approval... or he started to.

Midway through the approving nod, he stopped as his spine went rigid with horror. There was a detail he'd only just noticed; a detail that made him readjust his entire opinion of Franky. _Again_.

The massage table contained more than the usual face-hole. There was another gap further down, _at groin level_.

There was an opening to access the crotch. On a massage table. With spreadable legs.

Franky was a _pervert_.

Zoro looked back at the seat that had turned into The Lumpy Thing. It wasn't just a lumpy thing, he realized now, it was a _tantra chair_. A real, actual sex chair.

He hadn't recognized it at first. Zoro knew such things existed mostly from that time he stumbled into a brothel (_totally by accident)_ while looking for a bar. It turned out the place served sake, so instead of trying to locate the elusive bar - he was pretty sure it was deliberately hiding from him - he'd stayed and drank with the clients and staff. _And that was all he did_. Really. (…He'd only had enough money to cover his drinks.)

So sex chair. Right.

Zoro was done exploring.

In fact, he thought to himself as he clicked the ejector chair back into place, he should never explore anything ever again.


	2. The Sea of Statues - Chapter 1

Title: The Sea of Statues - Chapter 1  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: G  
Chapter Summary: The Strawhats encounter Creature Ex Machina, and explore a ghost ship.

-.-.-

As Zoro opened the trapdoor and climbed down to the Sunny's deck, Usopp paused in the middle of telling a story and pointed off the starboard railing. "Look!"

The crewmembers on deck all glanced with various levels of interest in the direction he pointed, then did double-takes and looked a lot more intently at the sight that was coming toward them, even calling the indoor crewmembers out onto the deck to see it.

After all, it's not often that you see a giant ball of treasure floating directly at you.

A filmy, glittering, teardrop-shaped mass floated through the misty skies of the Florian Triangle towards the Sunny. Inside the translucent exterior could be seen a gleaming pile of treasure. The Strawhats gaped for a moment before Usopp slammed his goggles down over his eyes and hurriedly focused the lenses.

"Gold bars," he started muttering to himself, "Ooh, silver! Jewelry? Is that for a neck or a head? Whoa, that's a lot of paper money! I've never seen coins that look like that before… what island are they from? That vase looks really old. Is that a decorative sword or a useful one?"

Chopper made a small squeaking sound as it came closer. "Is that a… bird?"

At first its color had blended in with the mist. A gigantic purple bird, about the size of a small ship, was at the apex of the teardrop, carrying the glittery net in its orange beak. The gleaming from the gold and jewels, not to mention the glitter of the net itself, had obscured the comparatively dull bird from view until now. As it approached they could see it more clearly. The deep purple color of the bird's feathers faded into green at the tips of its wings and tail. Its long graceful neck didn't seem to struggle with the weight hanging from its head. Its wings beat smoothly and barely ruffled the mist of the Florian Triangle as it passed over the Sunny.

It was hard to look at the details of the bird, though, when a king's ransom of treasure was passing just over Sunny's mast.

The treasure was unusually varied and diverse. As it floated overhead, those of them with better eyesight could make out gold and silver ingots, coins that seemed to come from a variety of currencies both modern and ancient, ornate antiques and jewelry, fancy ornamental and ceremonial items from unknown cultures… In other words, everything generally associated with treasure.

"How does it fly while holding up that much gold?" Chopper wondered, "That ball of treasure looks half the size of the bird. The weight must be unbelievable."

"Maybe the glittery thing is an antigravity net?" Usopp suggested, "Like the one I used when I was four years old to –"

Nami's fist clobbered him over the head, _"Physics doesn't work like that." _

"Pardon me, Nami-san, but if we had to follow the laws of physics, none of our adventures would have been possible." Sanji shrugged.

"Yeah! We're pirates!" Luffy chimed in, "Pirates don't have to follow the laws!"

_"Physics doesn't work like that either."_

"I'm afraid I have no answer." Robin sounded thoughtful.

"Dunno," Franky shrugged.

"See?" Usopp sounded triumphant. "Franky didn't say an antigravity net was impossible!"

"WAIT. WHY THE HELL ARE WE TALKING ABOUT PHYSICS? MY TREASURE IS GETTING AWAY! FOLLOW THE GODDAMN BIRD OR I'LL RIP YOUR EYES OUT!" Nami grabbed Luffy by the throat and started shaking him.

"The Florian Triangle has no wind or surface currents," Usopp wailed, "we'll never catch up!"

"Wait!" Franky leapt up on the ship's railing and posed, "The Soldier Dock System!"

"Yeah!" Luffy crowed, "We'll use the paddles again, the ones that helped us get away from that storm!"

Franky ran to the helm and soon the paddles were churning, following the ripples the bird had left in the deep purple mist.

"We're not fast enough," Zoro spoke up, saying what everyone must be noticing. They could only make out the indistinct shadow of the bird now as it steadily pulled ahead. "It's disappearing into the mist."

"We need to be faster!" Nami shrieked, "Who has the strongest legs? Sanji! Luffy! You guys run on the paddles and speed them up or I swear there will be hell to pay!" she had grown shark teeth by the time she finished speaking.

Two-point-seven seconds later Franky had installed bars on the sides of the ship for Luffy and Sanji to hold onto as they tandem-ran on the blades of the Sunny's paddles, forcing the ship ever faster.

As the two of them ran on the world's weirdest stairclimbing machines, 'faster' did not necessarily mean the ship moved in a straight line. When a paddle was going faster on one side than the other, the rudder could only do so much to compensate.

Of course, Nami didn't allow either one to _slow down_ to match pace, only screaming at the other to go faster until he was the one going too fast, so she would scream at the first one to go faster again.

In this way, the Sunny zigzagged haphazardly through the mist of the Florian Triangle.

-.-.-

Some amount of time later, Luffy and Sanji were both draped over the railing, looking completely wrung out. Monsters they may be, but Luffy had just maintained stamp gatling for five minutes, two of which were in gear second. While Sanji, however strong his legs, had been forced to keep up despite being merely human.

"Thankfully for you morons, there is still a chance. We may be slightly off course due to your inability to make the Sunny go in a straight line, but I think I got us back reasonably close to the bird's trail, and I managed to calculate its trajectory. It was flying 47.3 degrees clockwise off log point. As long as the bird keeps in a straight line, we should be able to follow it to wherever it took my treasure."

"That may be sooner than you think, Nami." Usopp said, still peering ahead through the mist with his goggles. "There's something straight ahead."

Sure enough, in the mists ahead of them a shape was slowly emerging.

"It's a ship!" Luffy pointed out unnecessarily, having recovered his breath. He grabbed Sunny's railing and began backing up, stretching his arms and building tension.

"There's something wrong with it," Zoro warned too late. With a _p-twang_! Luffy had already slingshotted himself over to the other ship before it was clearly visible.

A startled yelp from Luffy came back at them through the mist, but after that initial outburst there was silence.

The ship became clearer as it drew closer. Now the whole crew could tell what it was – a Marine warship, and a big one. The sides of the hull towered over Sunny so far that they couldn't see the other ship's deck. The faded outlines of the World Government symbol painted on the ragged sail of the Marine ship must have been what startled Luffy.

Rather, it _had_ _been_ a Marine warship, once upon a time. shredded sails and thick barnacles crusting the weathered planks of the hull indicated that it had been abandoned for quite a long time.

Nami sighed, "So who wants to go with me to retrieve our captain?"

Zoro was surprised for a moment that she was volunteering but quickly realized what her logic must have been. Luffy was on the apparently-abandoned ship, and would fight anything dangerous they came across. Meanwhile, Nami could board and steal anything that was not nailed down.

-.-.-

After pulling alongside the ghost ship, dropping anchor, and drawing straws – it was determined that Zoro would accompany Nami to the other ship. Which, okay. Sure. Zoro had no problem with that. Despite his newly acquired reluctance when it came to exploring, there probably wouldn't be any traumatizing pervert-furniture on a Marine ship. Right?

Franky introduced the crew to Soldier Dock channel 2, which contained a small boat he named the Mini Merry. Its paddles brought Nami and Zoro to the former Marine ship without incident, and soon they were boarding the wreck by climbing the towering side of the hull.

Minutes later the two of them hauled themselves over the railing onto the deck… or what was left of the deck. They looked around apprehensively. The entire ship looked like it had been used as a minefield, gaping holes pocketed the deck, providing direct access to the bowels of the ship. The holes varied in size, the smallest of them looked to be about twenty feet across, and the largest about twenty meters. The precarious remaining pieces of deck that still existed between the holes provided unstable walkways like a web of catwalk planks over the exposed innards of the ship.

That's when a sickly groaning sound echoed across the deck, making Nami and Zoro glance at each other to verify that, one, they both heard it, and two, neither of them had made the sound. They stared in caution (Zoro) and terror (Nami) as a form slowly began to take shape out of the mist, shuffling towards them on one of the narrow walkways that were all that remained of the ship's deck. It was humanoid in shape, but something about the way it was moving was so utterly wrong that it made the hairs on Zoro's neck stand up.

Now that he could make out the form, Zoro could see that it walked with an unnatural gait, moving first one leg then the other forward, but each step the leg bent in random directions and at no particular location on the leg, not using any noticeable joints. Its arms were both straight in front of it, and most disturbingly they were waving - alternating flapping up and down, the hands and fingers wiggling bonelessly.

Zoro's fighting instincts kicked into gear. The thing shuffled forward barely a few inches at a time, which meant it would be easy to outmaneuver, if only there was room to do so. But the narrow walkways made that possible tactic much harder, and Zoro had Nami's relative lack of physical ability to consider. She couldn't leap around the deck like he could, and just because the thing was moving slowly now didn't mean that was all it was capable of.

The thing continued groaning and shuffling forward, and now Zoro could see that it had no face, nor any other features. It looked to be made entirely of something rubbery or gelatinous, with no bones or joints, so the entire mass wiggled with each movement as it scraped slowly forward.

Nami shrieked and hid behind Zoro as it approached, and the swordsman reached for Wado's hilt, ready to draw.

Suddenly, the disturbing groaning was interrupted by snickering and giggling. A very familiar giggling.

Zoro sighed, "Damnit, Luffy! What the hell!?"

"Shishishi… Sorry Zoro, but you guys should have seen your faces!" Luffy popped out from hiding behind the thing, where he had been crouching and manipulating its limbs. "Check out the JellyMan! Creepy, yeah?"

He unceremoniously tossed the thing onto the walkway in front of him, where it continued to quiver and wobble for a long minute before going still.

Zoro facepalmed and Nami sighed, echoing Zoro's, "Damnit, Luffy!" before edging cautiously toward the thing, reaching out to gingerly poke at it with her Clima-tact – flinching back when the jostling started it up wiggling again.

"That's the only interesting one," Luffy said, pouting. "I looked for treasure, Nami, don't worry! But all there is is these guys."

Nami cocked her head, trying to parse Luffy's less-than-stellar communication skills. "What guys? Wait, you already checked every room on this huge ship?"

"Yep," Luffy said, popping the P. "Every room is broken open, so it's easy to look around quickly."

"Wait, I don't believe that. Let me see," with that, Nami produced a rope and grappling hook out of nowhere and began to use her burglary-honed agility skills to make her way into the lower decks. Luffy followed hot on her heels.

Zoro sat himself down and leaned against the railing for a nap while Nami and Luffy's voices floated steadily up from the bowels of the stadium-sized ship. He had no idea how long he slept until the voices drew closer again and called his name.

"Zoro, hey Zoro! We're ready to go back now." the swordsman opened his eyes to see Nami and Luffy emerging from one of the holes. Nami was empty-handed, but Luffy…

"What the hell is that." Zoro grumped irritably.

"Zoro, meet Strawman! There's some wooden ones down there. Stone too." Luffy climbed onto the deck with what appeared to be a scarecrow-mannequin-doll slung over his shoulder.

Zoro looked to Nami for interpretation, who shrugged, "He wanted to show it to you."

"Look!" Luffy plonked the doll down on an intact piece of deck and placed his hat on its head with a flourish, "Strawman has a straw hat!"

Zoro rolled his eyes but smirked anyway, and then started looking more closely at the man-sized strawman. Whoever had made it must have put in a lot of work. The face was nearly featureless, with only a hint of a bump where the nose would be and slight impressions of hollows for eyes. But a surprising amount of detail had gone into shaping each of the fingers and toes. Zoro didn't know anything about weaving, but that must have been skillful too since not a single strand of straw had popped out of the thatching despite Luffy's less than gentle handling.

"So how was the ship?" Zoro asked Nami.

"Terrible! Not a speck of treasure. There wasn't so much as a single copper penny aboard," she scowled as if the ship had personally insulted her. "Even the non-treasure supplies are ruined. This ship has been open and exposed for so long that everything in storage is unusable."

Zoro knew the correct reply would be, "That's a shame," but honestly, he couldn't make himself care enough to say it. They already had all the supplies they needed in Sunny's storage rooms.

Instead he said, "So what do we do now?"

"Let's go back to Sunny!" Luffy chirped, plopping his hat back on his head and looping one arm around Strawman. He grabbed the railing with his free hand and began to back up before Nami stopped him.

"Wait, Luffy! Wouldn't you rather ride in Mini Merry?"

"Ride in what?" Luffy blinked vacantly.

The next few minutes were bright with enthusiastic jabbering as Luffy gushed over the Mini Merry and demanded to go out on a joyride right away. Luffy also insisted on bringing Strawman, but unfortunately the Mini Merry was only capable of holding three passengers, so the straw 'passenger' had to be carried by Zoro in the middle seat while Nami worked the paddles in back and Luffy whooped and hollered and waved his arms on the bow.

"Faster, Nami! Faster!"

"It doesn't go that fast, Luffy. This boat was meant for getting supplies and ferrying us around. It's not like a Waver."

"Well maybe it should be! Whooooah, can you imagine? If you put the dials from the waver on this boat how fast do you think it can go?"

Nami's fist thwacked Luffy on the head, "Don't touch my waver!" but she'd had to reach past Zoro to reach the young captain, and with her having to weave around the mannequin in the way, her lunge unbalanced the boat and they came within inches of toppling into the water.

At the last second Zoro steadied the craft and once it was finally stable shot Nami a Look. "Do you mind?"

"He was threatening my Waver!" was her indignant reply.

"Let's go back to our ship," Zoro sighed.

"Awww…" Luffy whined.

-.-.-

"What. The hell is that." Sanji said flatly when Zoro tossed Strawman down on the Sunny's Lawn Deck after they finally climbed back aboard their ship.

"There's Marine statue-dolls! They're all made of stuff. No treasure though," Luffy chirped.

Sanji looked to Nami for interpretation, who clarified, "What Luffy was trying to say was that there's a few wooden and stone statues on the Marine ship, but nothing valuable." She shrugged and then began talking as if musing to herself, "They're real statues, though. I wouldn't call them dolls. Nothing that moves except the jelly-guy."

If anything, Sanji looked even more baffled, but Zoro wasn't paying any attention to the crap-cook since Franky had gasped and Robin had bolted upright in her lawn chair.

"**_Statues_**?"


	3. The Sea of Statues - Chapter 2

Title: The Sea of Statues - Chapter 2  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: PG  
Chapter Summary: The Strawhats discuss the Sea of Statues and Zoro plays a game during watch. Then they land on a mysterious island...  
Notes: Notes (and images) found on my squizbee livejournal

"Statues? Oh my, have we really gone into _that_ part of the Florian Triangle?" Robin sounded legitimately surprised.

"What part is that?" Nami asked.

"The entire Florian Triangle is notorious for ships disappearing - over a hundred every year - but one part of the Triangle is especially strange. The island of Manoa is located somewhere in the Florian Triangle, and the waters around it are called the Sea of Statues."

"Well I've heard of Manoa," Nami said, "_Everyone's_ heard of Manoa." There was a round of nods from the crew. "But I've never heard of the Sea of Statues before."

"It's one of the ways the island defends itself," Franky said.

Before he could finish whatever he was going to say, Luffy popped into the conversation with a predictable, "What's Manoa?"

"I can't _believe_ you're asking that," Nami sighed in disbelief, "Manoa is the richest island in the world!"

"Never heard of it," Luffy stuck a finger up his nose.

"Manoa is one of the most mysterious places ever!" Usopp took over with a dramatic flourish, "It is a legend throughout the four Blues! It is said to be an island that is impossible to reach unless invited. Everything and everyone from that island is blessed and perfected by the gods!" He returned to a normal voice, "Even you should have heard of it, Luffy. I can't believe anyone has grown up without hearing it mentioned."

Luffy shrugged and pouted.

"And those of us from nearby islands like Water 7 know one additional fact – that Manoa is protected by the Statue Guardian," Franky added. "The statues happen to those who try to reach it without the permission of the gods."

"Manoa is not on any of the log pose paths through the Grand line, so the only way to reach it is with an Eternal Pose. Anyone who forcibly takes a pose from their traders ends up like this." Robin gestured at the nearby ghost ship.

"Wait a minute," Nami interjected, pointing at the Marine ghost ship "are you saying that someone who ranks high enough to command a _Marine warship _tried to steal a Manoan eternal pose?"

"I've seen it myself," Franky lifted his shades to look at Nami to show his sincerity. "Lotta corrupt Marines in the world, and with Manoa's reputation... Well, plenty of Marines have tried to bully an eternal pose off Manoan traders when they stop at Water 7. It seems likely that throughout history, some of them have succeeded."

"And then they all got turned into statues?" Usopp asked.

Nami shook her head, "Can't be. We saw maybe ten statues, total, on the entire warship. Even with the barest minimum crew, it would take thirty men to run a ship like that, and that doesn't even take into consideration that those warships are always packed with ordinary Marines who are only there as fighters."

"That fits what I've seen," Franky agreed, "I've salvaged ghost ships from the Sea of Statues that get towed in to Water 7, and there are usually only a couple of statues aboard. Sometimes none at all. Nowhere near enough for a crew."

Usopp started to twitch nervously, "Somehow, that's even creepier than if entire crews were turning into statues."

"Going into every detail about Manoa would take forever," Nami waved her hand dismissively. "Let's keep following the path of that treasure. The bird obviously didn't come here. We've wasted enough time on this dead end. Now, weigh anchor!" she called out.

The crew continued to follow Nami's directions. The Florian Triangle fog became so thick that even if they were passing by other ghost ships, they hadn't been able to see them. It felt like they were sailing blind, but Nami's confidence in her calculations never wavered, and they pushed on until it started to get too dark to safely keep going.

-.-.-

After dropping anchor for the night, everybody else went to bed and Zoro retired to the gym in the crow's nest for a nighttime workout, figuring there was no point in playing lookout during watch when the fog was so thick he wouldn't be able to see anything coming until it was right on top of them.

Zoro was doing weighted handstand pushups, and planned to reach a thousand before collapse.

The hardest part of training like he did wasn't just the physical exertion, but the exertion combined with the endless tedium. He had gotten so used to counting that it took no mental effort anymore, and his mind had started trying to reach for something else to do. Recently he'd started coming up with ways to entertain himself. He had one in mind for today.

As they were waiting around in Water 7, Chopper had said a string of words to Zoro that the swordsman could not understand, but seemed to be something medical related. The words were "a diagnosis of progressive trauma-induced topographical disorientation." If he didn't know any better Zoro would think Chopper was just messing with him and had made up a bunch of nonsense words to see if he'd fall for it.

But there were a few reasons that couldn't be true.

First off, Chopper was sincere to a fault, especially about medicine, and would never pull pranks in general unless it was Usopp's idea. And this didn't seem like an Usopp prank.

Second, upon first hearing the words, the shit cook had laughed so hard he choked on and nearly swallowed his cigarette. Pity he hadn't suffocated on that disgusting thing.

Last, Zoro actually did know one of those words. 'Trauma' was a (totally unnecessary) fancy word that meant 'injury'. Zoro was pretty sure all the crew's injuries from Enies Lobby were healed, so even that didn't help him figure out what Chopper meant.

Well, he supposed he could take all this extra time while training to think through it. He could try to use the parts of the words to figure out the meanings. It was worth a try.

"A diagnosis of progressive trauma-induced topographical disorientation."

First, "progressive." He wasn't _certain_, but it was very similar to the word "progress," which he knew meant going forward. Same with "diagnosis." It was very close to the word "diagonal", so maybe it was a related word. Diagonal meant slanted, and progress meant forward. So "Diagnosis of Progressive…" meant going forward at a slanted angle. Simple enough.

"Trauma" meant injury. He already knew that.

He couldn't think of what "induced" might mean, although the word sounded familiar, so he skipped over that one for now. That brought him to "topographical." Well, he knew what a graph was – a graph was turning math into a picture. And graphic was another word for a picture, so it probably had something to do with an image. Topo- was another dead end, at least for now. Next was "disorientation." He knew that "Orient" meant East, and dis- meant "not-", so disorient meant not-east. West, then?

"A diagnosis of progressive trauma-induced topographical disorientation." – Slanted forward, injury-something, something-picture Westward.

No, that couldn't be right.

He ought to try to figure out the missing parts. Zoro was somewhat confident in his guesses so far, but he would have to stretch logic for these last ones and they would probably be wrong but he was going to go for it. First he had an idea for induce. Deuce was a word for two, usually used in cards. "In-" was another word-fragment that meant "not," just like "dis-" did in "disorient." So in-duce might mean "not-two". What wasn't two? Well, _one_. It had to mean one, because anything more than two also had two in it, but the only thing that wasn't two and didn't _contain_ two (yet still existed) was one.

The only idea he had for Topo- was the word "Topic," which probably wasn't right but it was all he had. Unless it was even simpler? Maybe it was just "Top," meaning the highest part of something, and the extra O didn't mean anything.

"A diagnosis of progressive trauma-induced topographical disorientation." – "Slanted forward injury-one highestpicture westward."

Well, he obviously screwed up something somewhere. More importantly, his set of a thousand was done. Zoro toweled off, opened the trapdoor, and climbed his way down to the deck.

His watch was nowhere near over, but Zoro was taking a rest between sets, so he wandered into the library and discovered both Robin and Chopper were up late reading. This wasn't a surprise, since insomnia regularly happened to some of the Strawhat crew, depending on the kind of lives they had led before joining Luffy.

In fact, it was fortunate for Luffy that he was made of rubber, considering his habit of climbing into bed with one of his sleeping nakama every night. Some of the crew had pretty bad nights once in a while - especially those with enemies that would attack them while they slept. More than once Luffy would have had his neck broken by Robin or his skull caved in by Nami or Chopper if he'd been made of normal flesh.

Zoro had needed to defend himself straight out of a deep sleep plenty of times, but that experience didn't result in attacking when someone approached him while he slept. Instead, Zoro had trouble getting to sleep at all at night (part of why he slept so much during the day) and even in his deepest sleep he was always vigilant for any hostile intent or foreign presence. (This would surprise his nakama, as people his subconscious deemed "safe" couldn't wake him even if they tried.)

As a silver lining, at least Chopper's insomnia was lucky for Zoro tonight.

"Oi Chopper," Zoro said as he approached the little reindeer, "I've got a question for you."

-.-.-

About five minutes later, it seemed obvious that word games weren't one of Zoro's strong points. It turned out he had only gotten one of the words right, and another one of them half-right. "A diagnosis of progressive trauma-induced topographical disorientation." Diagnosis had nothing to do with diagonal, but was doctor-speak for telling you what's wrong with you. Zoro had gotten Progressive right, at least. Trauma he already knew. Induced he had gotten completely wrong, but once Chopper explained it to him, Zoro remembered actually knowing the word "induce" already (it was a totally pointless word that meant "to cause"). It turned out "topographical" meant "terrain," making it yet another pointless word that was completely unnecessary. Finally, disorientation was the one he had gotten partially right. It seemed Orient had two meanings; it could mean both East and something like "knowing where you are."

Zoro barely held himself back from asking Chopper to next time say, "Your brains are scrambled from head injury, and it makes you lost." But he didn't for two reasons. The first was that Zoro did _not_ have a problem with getting lost, that was a pack of lies made up by his nakama. The second was that the word game had kept him going while powering through a thousand-rep set, making it useful. But he certainly wasn't going to ask Chopper to give him more ridiculous strings of words to guess at. That had been quite enough.

The second set of a thousand seemed to pass much more slowly. The third took approximately forever. After the fourth, Zoro was reaching the critical point in the workout – the one where he started to wonder if he should give up his dream and become a farmer because at least he wouldn't have to do this anymore.

Increasing the number of reps he could do before reaching that point meant that he was making progress.

At last, watch was over.

Zoro could finally go to bed, switching off with Robin and clambering down into the boys' room.

In the dim light he glanced around, wondering whose body heat their captain had ended up stealing tonight.

He found Luffy snuggled into Usopp's back. The young captain's arms were wrapped around his sharpshooter, his hands burrowed under Usopp's overalls to warm his hands directly on the skin of his sniper's chest and stomach.

Zoro felt a smirk trying to take over his face before he caught himself. No. It was not cute; they were not cute. No.

Even if they were, Zoro had no use for cuteness. Instead of noticing the cute, Zoro was feeling… glad that it wasn't him. Yeah, that was the reason.

Luffy rarely stayed in his own bed all night. Not only was the guy clingy and invasive in general, but once the rubber boy finally settled down, all the heat usually generated from his constant movement and insanely high metabolism suddenly dropped off a cliff and his hands and feet turned into ice – ice which he warmed on his crewmates. Zoro didn't know whether it had anything to do with Luffy's devil fruit or his relatively small size or just his usual complete disregard for the way reality is supposed to work. Either way, surprise ice-cold hands were an unwelcome way to wake up, and unpleasant in general unless they were near a summer island. Sometimes it was also accompanied by legs wrapping around the unfortunate victim's hips so Luffy could bury his feet between their thighs, and on one truly nightmarish occasion had stuffed his feet down the back of Zoro's pants to warm his icy toes on the swordsman's butt. (Zoro had promptly thrown him halfway through the wall.)

So the thing he was feeling was _relief_ that Luffy's victim was one of the others. Problem solved.

They were not cute.

Zoro flopped heavily into his bunk, smirking in satisfaction at Sanji's irritated grumble from the bunk above him, and immediately fell asleep.

-.-.-

The next day they continued chasing the bird, following Nami's calculations. Zoro was starting to wonder how long they were going to keep going like this. How long would it take for Nami to give up this path?

When they reached the edge of the Florian Triangle?

When they reached the Calm Belt?

When their supplies ran out?

Oh well, it wasn't Zoro's job to worry about such things. Luffy had the authority to override her, but he seemed content to let her do her thing. Otherwise the navigation was Nami's problem and making the supplies last as long as they needed to was up to the crap cook. Zoro's only job was to get stronger, along with occasionally Luffy-wrangling.

What he had done on Water 7, keeping the crew functional, that hadn't been his job. That had been a _condition_ for his continued presence on the crew. His being a Strawhat Pirate was _conditional_. Zoro had to be able to leave if being on the crew started to hinder his goal.

True, unwavering friendship was one of the things he had given up when he decided to chase his dream at all costs. But that didn't mean he wouldn't try to prevent them from falling apart. He liked it here. He wanted to stay.

Now, in the aftermath of that event, Usopp was still a little shaky and uncertain of his place on the crew.

They bore him no ill will for what had happened at Water 7. The sniper had been a damn fool, but he had done what he thought was right. When Robin was in trouble he'd stood by the crew in the very heart of enemy territory, and in the end he'd been able to set aside his pride and apologize for what he'd done.

Zoro was glad he was back.

Luffy's voice boomed excitedly from the Sunny's figurehead, "Hey guys, I see an island!"

-.-.-

The thick fog seemed to abruptly vanish about half a kilometer from the island's shore, which meant that if it was the same way around the whole island, it would make this island the sole sunny spot surrounded by a ring of purple gloom.

"Is this where the bird went?" Chopper asked excitedly.

"The path led us straight here," Robin replied, "So it seems likely."

"The log pose isn't reacting," Nami said, "This island must be off the normal routes."

"Well, let's draw straws already to decide who goes ashore!" Usopp urged.

Chopper, Zoro, and Sanji were chosen as the landing crew and climbed aboard the Mini Merry, leaving Luffy's disappointed wailing behind as they set out toward the shore. They landed on a picturesque beach which sloped gently up to meet a hardwood forest. There were no signs of human inhabitants – no garbage, no structures – and they pushed their way inland until they stumbled on a trail.

The width and smoothness of the dirt trail indicated it was human-made, so they followed it inland, Chopper prancing along happily in Walk Point while the crap cook mumbled things that Zoro couldn't be arsed to listen to.

Eventually the forest cleared away into a green meadow in which rested a smallish but beautifully built cabin. As they approached, they could see a woman of indeterminate age sitting on the porch doing some kind of embroidery. That was normal enough, but the part that didn't match the scene is that she was wearing what looked like a ball gown, one that was so fancy and richly decorated that even Zoro noticed it. It was the kind of gown usually seen in formal evening parties, not midmorning porch sitting.

As they approached, the woman leapt to her feet with a small gasp, but then shakily curtsied, though they could see her sneaking looks up at them from her bowed position, deep caution in her eyes.

"Welcome, strangers! The treasure is to the North of the island. Please do not kill anyone, and leave the eternal pose behind when you go."

"Pardon me mademoiselle, could you perhaps answer a few-"

The door shut as the woman fled indoors.

"Why did she run inside?" Zoro asked, addressing no one specifically. "We know she's in there, so if we were hostile all she would have done is trapped herself and pissed us off.

"Don't insult a lady like that!" Sanji snapped, "There might be some kind of underground escape route. Or she could be retrieving a weapon to defend herself."

"We should move on," Chopper suggested nervously.

They passed by the house and followed the path. As it traveled further inland the path widened to become a road paved in a way Zoro had never seen before. The three of them stopped and stared at the road surface for a minute.

"It's a tessellation." Chopper breathed in wonder. Stones in contrasting shades of gray had been cut into precise shapes and placed together in an elaborate pattern that looked like overlapping circles. The very edges of the road were a border made out of some other kind of material that was shaped to keep the stones in place on the inside but leave clean edges on the outside.

Maybe some of the others would appreciate the road, but its impressiveness was mostly lost on Zoro. Wouldn't normal cobblestones have been a lot easier?

Well, the fanciness of the road combined with how well-swept it was told Zoro that they were finally getting somewhere. Soon enough, a small group of houses appeared through the trees.

It was the _number_ of houses that was small. The houses themselves were not.

The forest gave way to elaborate landscaping surrounding the kinds of houses that should only exist in a density of one per town. They were all structured completely different, one having a round tower on one corner and turrets, and its nextdoor neighbor (which was still hundreds of meters away) looked like a many-tiered Wano mansion, and the one next to _that_ had a bunch of Roman columns, and the one after _that_ looked like a big rectangle made out of a bunch of other rectangles.

The landscaping was similarly different near each house. Some of the house owners seemed to like flowers, one of them had an actual hedge maze, and the Wano-style house had a Zen rock garden

Zoro was now certain that their landing crew had been badly chosen. The others would have had more appreciation for all this.

Just then, a child ran giggling out of the hedge maze. The little urchin was so dirty it was hard to tell much about him. His hair all stuck up on one side – Zoro didn't know if that was deliberate – and his clothes were grass stained with the pant cuffs and sleeves rolled up.

"Ah!" He yelped when he saw the group, coming up short so dramatically he left actual skid marks in the dirt. "Invaders! _Ohhhh_…"

That last utterance was an abrupt distraction from his initial shock, as he caught sight of Chopper in his Walk Point.

The child ran up to them with surprising speed. "Can I pet it?" he asked Sanji, eyes sparkling.

"Rey! Get back here!" came an approaching voice out of the hedge maze. "Haven't I told you not to…"

A young woman in work clothes and a dirt-smudged face barreled out of the hedge maze and drew up short in an imitation of the young boy, skidding and all. "Oh no! Invaders! _Rey_!"

The boy startled abruptly, "A-ah right! Uh. Welcome, strangers! The treasure is to the North. P-please don't kill anyone, and leave the eternal pose behind?"

He turned and bolted off as quickly as he had arrived.

"Hey wait!" Chopper yelled, clearly as confused as the rest of them, "Ah, man! He's gone. What kind of a place is this!?" He shouted, addressing that last comment at the world in general.

"What do you mean?" the woman asked, sounding baffled, as she was backing away slowly. "Obviously you made it to Manoa."


	4. The Sea of Statues - Chapter 3

Title: The Sea of Statues - Chapter 3  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: G  
Chapter Summary: The Strawhats sort through the legends and lore of Manoa.  
Notes: the usual notes and extras at squizbee dot livejournal dot com

"And that's when we decided to come back." Chopper concluded the scouting team's report.

"I can't believe we're at the island of _Manoa_." Nami sounded faint, carefully lowering herself down into a chair. "The richest island in the world," she whispered to herself.

"And it appears to be the home of the treasure-bird." Robin added.

"That makes sense," Usopp was scratching his chin. Then he brightened and held up one finger in realization, "More than that. This solves the mystery of Manoa!"

"Care to explain?" Zoro asked, not making the connection.

"I'm so glad you asked! It's obvious that the bird that we saw is the key! It's the source of the island's wealth AND the Statue Guardian that Franky talked about. It takes all the treasure from the ships that sail too close to its home, and it turns the crew into statues! The Manoans then trade the treasure for their wealth."

"There's a few problems with that, Nose-bro," Franky interjected. "Most importantly, stuff like the treasure we saw the bird carrying is not what the Manoans bring to sell when their traders come to Water 7. Also, if they were trading treasure away, then why did the inhabitants make it sound like there's a bunch of it just sitting around to the north of the island waiting to be taken? Next, even if the bird robbed every vessel that has been found empty in the Florian Triangle, would that be enough wealth to fully fund the richest island in the world? And remember that there aren't enough statues on the ships to account for the number of crew, and-"

"Everyone," Robin interrupted in a voice that immediately quieted the room. "I suggest we do this in a more organized manner. Do I have permission to arrange this, Captain-kun?"

Luffy nodded distractedly from where he was gazing out the window.

"Then I suggest we all move to the library for this."

-.-.-

"So," Robin's voice held a tone they'd rarely heard from her, "There's more to this island than you think. I confess I'm uneasy about it. Should we try to get some information before we land?"

"How are we supposed to do that, Robin-chwan?"

"I suggest we pool our information. We are from such diverse backgrounds that collectively we may know more than we think. What do you think about combining our knowledge before we land?"

Everyone shrugged or made various noises of assent. It couldn't hurt. Manoa was a large-ish island, so he scouting expedition had taken all day and it was now dark enough that they already had to wait until morning before making landfall. So talking for a while wouldn't delay the onset of the next adventure.

"I suggest that instead of our actual knowledge, we start with the legends," Robin said. "Through my life I've learned that rumor and myth often contain a grain of truth, so it might be worth sorting through what we've all heard, even the things that have been proven false."

Everyone nodded and shrugged some more.

"Usopp, you're our storyteller. What have you heard about Manoa?"

"Eh, not much. Only what I said before: it is one of the most mysterious places in the world, a legend throughout the four Blues. It's an island of gold, impossible to reach unless invited. Everything and everyone from that island is blessed and perfected by the gods."

"Sounds like a load of bull to me." Zoro grunted.

"_Zoro_," Nami's voice was frosty with warning.

"It does sound mythical, but I can tell you from experience that the trading ships from Manoa are definitely real."

"Franky, we're talking about legends for now. If you want to talk, what have you heard that's been disproven or sounds too fantastical to be real?"

"Jeez, that's a lot of stuff," Franky scratched his head, "Manoa is a _super_ popular topic in the taverns. We get people from all over the world coming to the island to see our shipwrights, and all of them bring their own legends." The cyborg paused in thought for a minute, "I guess it breaks down into three…ish? main rumors.

"The most common belief is that it is the richest mining and smelting operation in the world, because of what they bring to trade. They don't bring raw ore, though – the precious metals they sell are as refined and pure as any gold ingot found in a bank vault. They also bring in and sell uncut versions of every kind of gemstone, even though that should be geologically impossible for a single location.

"The mining theory can't be true for a lot of reasons, actually. First, like I said, it's not possible to mine every kind of precious metal and gemstone on one island, even a big one! There's not enough kinds of rock even on the largest island, and Manoa is small enough to hide in the Florian Triangle. The second reason it can't be true is because the traders don't buy mining or smelting equipment, just normal stuff and high-end consumer goods. Finally… it's not all gems and metal, they'll bring in ivory, rare corals, pearl, tortoiseshell, and I've even seen them sell barrels full of unspun _silk filaments_. Obviously none of those things can come out of a mine! So that whole mining theory is completely bunk."

"Good, Franky. Keep going."

"Right. Now the second kind of rumor is that they have a way to synthesize the materials they trade. Like an alchemist who can turn normal stones into all that stuff. Maybe with a devil fruit. Or they have a magic tree that grows fruits made of all those different substances. That would make a lot of sense, but it doesn't explain why everybody who's been to the island is so silent on the matter, or why this island has been so special for so many hundreds of years. How would they make sure a devil fruit reappears on that same island every time the user dies? Why are the Manoan people themselves so extraordinary? And since they bring in workers from outside the island, how is it that after so many centuries, not a single blabbermouth or greedy bastard has slipped in and spoiled their secrets? Do they have a mind-reader and future-teller as well as an alchemist? Seems unlikely.

"The last major set of rumors is that the people of Manoa are a special race. They really are demigods, or they live on a dimensional gate to paradise, or have changed from exposure to some other magical form of bullshit – fairy dust or something – that slowly transforms whatever comes in contact with it into some kind of perfected state. But that doesn't make sense because that would affect the normal people who go to work there, and why would they ship in all the high quality and expensive goods if they could get cheap stuff and it would automatically turn into the perfect form they want?"

"So, ah, that's all I've got." Franky scratched his head sheepishly.

Everyone was silent for a bit after Franky had finished.

"That's fairly comprehensive," Robin finally said, if Zoro didn't know better he'd think she sounded impressed. "Does anyone else know any legends about the land or its people?"

After another moment Zoro reluctantly sighed and closed his eyes. He could at least outline the basics. "Manoan fighters who leave to travel the outside world are called heroes, saints and demigods. They're not, but that's the rumor anyway."

He could feel the curious stares from some of the others, but Zoro kept his eyes closed and his expression of moderate boredom never faltered.

"And you, Nami?" Robin finally said, causing a flicker of relief that if Robin had noticed him being less than forthcoming, she had kept it to herself. He opened his eyes but didn't dare look in Robin's direction, just in case.

"I only know rumors about the people who go to work there," Nami shrugged. "It's not about the island or the people of Manoa, so I didn't think it mattered."

"You never know," Robin lightly rebuked the navigator. "Please tell us what you heard."

"Oh I suppose… Once in a while, someone with a reputation for being exceptionally principled is allowed on one of the trade ships to go work on the island." Nami dutifully recited, "They bring in normal people for some kinds of unprestigious, low-skilled, or undervalued work, like personal servants, nurses, and lowly paper-pushers. The work not befitting of the gods is done by normal people."

Her eyes became slightly more distant, "I never stole from civilians, but I would have made an exception for one of them. Anyone who's worked at Manoa is a thief's greatest dream. They serve for as long as they like and then come out with enormous fortune. A street sweeper that works there for a year will come back home with as much gold as he can carry."

Nami shrugged, "It's hard to find any real information. The ones who come back immediately go into hiding. They tend to lay low, since anyone who finds out they came from Manoa knows that person will be completely loaded, and the perfect target for every criminal on the seas. Anyone who worked there is guaranteed enough wealth to live comfortably for the next three generations.

"Before they go into hiding, those that return are always cagey about what they find there. The people themselves seem fine, as un-traumatized as can be. But all of them, every one, says the same thing – the outside world should leave the island in peace."

"Wow you sure do know a lot," Chopper sounded impressed.

Nami sighed, "I learned all this because I wanted to go there myself. It didn't matter, though; Arlong would never have let me leave. Anyway I would never have made it through whatever vetting they do."

She perked up for a moment and shrugged, "This part isn't even rumor, just basic logic: The vetting process must be intense, since apparently no one, no matter how good an actor, has infiltrated to learn and expose the island's secrets. They somehow have one hundred percent accuracy. It's hard to believe no one has managed to slip through, unless the oversights and mistakes are the ones who don't come back."

"HOLD THE SNAIL-PHONE!" Usopp wailed. "Why do you make it sound like some of the workers meet a horrible fate?!"

"I never said that, you coward. Most of the workers who go there do come back, but once in a while one of them won't," Nami shrugged again, "That really is all I've heard about it. I only know any of this secondhand. You don't hear from the workers themselves because they collect their families and immediately go into hiding – move and change their names and all that."

"That is a lot more information than I could have imagined, Nami-san." Sanji smiled around his cigarette, "I'm sure it will be useful."

"Anyone else?" Robin said, diverting attention from Nami's blush. She waited for a minute before concluding, "…So that covers the rumor side of things. Let's move on to what each of us knows for real about Manoa. We may get a better picture of the whole if we combine our knowledge. Perhaps we should start with stating what we know in broad general categories: As for me - I know some of its prominent scholars and the island's political relationship with the world government. Who next? Franky?"

"We're one of the nearest islands, so their ships dock at Water 7 and they do a lot of their trading there. So I know the details about those. And we know some about the Statue Sea since we're so close to it. "

"A few of their… _chefs_ have visited the Baratie," Sanji muttered, puffing on his cigarette and suddenly seeming grumpier than usual.

"I, THE GREAT USOPP, WAS ONCE THE KING OF M-. Ow, damnit Nami! Okay fine, all I know are the stories – nothing for sure – so I've already said everything earlier."

"I've said pretty much everything, too," Nami admitted. "It's so hard to find the former workers that all I have are the stories. So I guess I know… um… their fashion designers?"

Zoro spoke up, "I know a little about their swordsmanship." This topic was less fraught than rumors and legends.

"I've never met any of them, but I've read some of the work done by Manoan researchers…?" Chopper ventured.

"Zzzz…" was Luffy's contribution, having fallen asleep some time ago.

-.-.-

"Excellent. Who will start… Sanji-kun?"

"Yes, Robin-chwaaan~!"

"Tell us what you know about the chefs of Manoa."

"Of course Robin chwaa-~" Nami's karate chop on the top of his head struck an instant before Zoro was going to knock the shitty cook upside the skull with Kitetsu's hilt.

"Nami-swan is so cute when she's violent~…" Just before Zoro lost his temper Sanji rallied and turned serious.

"I've met a few of their… chefs, if you can call them that." Sanji grumbled. "In some ways, they can hardly be considered real cooks. But in others… they are equal to anything the Baratie has ever produced." He took a long drag on his cigarette as everyone else boggled in disbelief.

The reactions came all at once: "No way"/"What do you mean"/"That's impossible"/"How can that be true?"

Even Zoro was surprised, though he would never say it out loud.

"What do you mean by in some ways, Sanji-kun?"

Sanji blew out a long stream of smoke and replied, "Every dish I've ever sampled from a Manoan chef is as good as anything the shitty geezer or I have ever managed."

He paused and let that sink in before continuing, "Their food could bring the harshest critic to his knees, But… well… what they say about gods might have some truth to it. The dishes are beyond belief, but a Manoan chef may only make one meal a day. Or a _week_. It's like they work on a different time scale than the rest of the world. What pissed us off was that they will only use the finest ingredients. And the worst part… if there was a single detail that did not meet their standards, they would discard the whole dish and start over. If it was important to the flavor that part of the meal be a certain temperature, if some subtlety of flavor might be compromised by storing or reheating any of the dishes, they would throw it _all_ out and start over. They never accepted anything less than perfection and wasted good food to do it, and for that I will never forgive them."

There was silence as Sanji stubbed out his cigarette with somewhat more force than necessary.

"Indeed. That fits with my experience," Robin supplied. "Manoa produces the finest and most rigorous scholars in the world, but those scholars fail to rise to prominence because they do not adhere to constraints of deadlines or budget. The work gets done correctly and thoroughly, no matter what it takes.

Chopper raised his hoof, "My knowledge is the same. The biologists and medical researchers of Manoa are extremely skilled, but rarely make good doctors because they do not work quickly and will not tolerate commonly accepted unknown variables or standard margins of error."

Nami continued in the same vein, "The clothing by their designers is of the highest quality but way too expensive for anyone who isn't royalty. It's wearable, _couture_ art. There's at least one designer who makes entire elaborate outfits out of tiny beads, and another who uses intricately painted seashells..." she trailed off.

Robin nodded. "One more thing to add: I may not be an expert, but what I have seen of their other artists is the same as what we have described so far. They are not prolific, but each work is a masterpiece. I bring that up because there is another art that I suspect might be different…"

She turned and looked straight at Zoro. "Zoro-kun? You said you knew something about the fighters. How do they fit with what the rest of us have described? I imagine something like fighting is quite different. You cannot take your time in battle and there are no do-overs. How do the 'Heroes of Manoa' handle the fighting arts?"

Zoro considered his answer. "High technical skill. The best armor and weapons money can buy. But otherwise not special. They're known for doing good deeds and helping people, even if that help doesn't involve fighting. They never take payment."

He stopped there, figuring that was all he knew that might matter to other people.

"Good. Now, Franky, tell us what you know. You said Water 7 was a favorite trading port for Manoa?"

"Yeah, the traders themselves are pretty laid back, all relaxed and friendly, but they guard their goods extremely well, so they didn't lose much to theft even with all the pirates around Water 7. They bring in all kinds of valuable materials to trade. The traders and guards are completely mum about where they get it all, and since they're so fancy high-class, none of them sneak off to drink so we can't use alcohol or trickery to loosen their tongues. Too rich to be bribed too. Basically all we have are the rumors I said earlier."

"What, exactly, do they trade?"

"Mostly raw treasure for beri, a little like you guys did. Only unlike you guys, they're fine with some loss on the exchange rate. They sure have enough of the stuff."

"See? They trade in treasure! Treasure like that bird we saw!" Usopp sounded excited, "That can't just be a coincidence. He is the source of Manoa's wealth!"

"No, not that kind of treasure. The traders bring in these gigantic pure uncut gemstones, along with these big irregular discs of precious metals, and sometimes lumps of other materials to trade. The bird was carrying normal treasure, already crafted."

"Could they have the bird steal treasure and then melt down the gold and whatnot to hide its origin?" Nami asked.

"Unlikely," Robin answered in place of Franky, "It is nearly impossible to make a cut gem look like it has never been shaped. And since a gem's value increases exponentially with its size, breaking large, already-cut gems into small raw pieces to sell would be foolishly wasteful even for those who have more wealth than they can spend. Furthermore, I know the World Government has been keeping close track of this mysterious and wealthy land, trying to find clues about it. They would notice if the trading expeditions were correlated to treasure disappearing elsewhere."

"Wait what?" Chopper interrupted, flailing his hooves, "Even the World Government can't locate this island? How is it possible that the World Government can't find the richest island in the world?"

"Likely the World Government would be able to reach it if they put their full effort into finding it, but they haven't pressed that hard, since the traders willingly pay all the taxes that are asked of them when they reach port."

"Still," Chopper pressed, "why is it so hard to get to?"

"Manoa is not on any of the log pose paths through the Grand Line, so the only way to reach it is with an Eternal Pose," Franky answered him, "Anyone who takes a trader's pose never returns, and as we saw from the ghost ship, that includes the occasional corrupt marine who decides to invade."

"So people just _take_ eternal poses from the traders?"

"Manoa has the funds to hire top-notch security, but they're hired to guard the goods more than the log pose, so it happens sometimes," Franky answered again. "The traders usually bring along more than one eternal pose just in case."

"Wait, do _only_ the traders have poses?" Sanji asked, "What about the other people who come from the island? The legendary gods and saints and whatnot?"

"I can answer that," Nami said. "It's because there's so many attempts to steal or forcibly take an eternal pose from the traders. It's not easy to steal one, but that doesn't stop people from trying. The thieving attempts would be so pervasive that travelers from the island don't take poses of their own; they ride with the traders to port, and when they are finished with whatever they were doing, they find another of the trading vessels to bring them home."

"H-hey. I'm still worried about the whole 'thieves never come back' thing," Usopp said.

"What happens when someone does manage to take a log pose is the darkest mystery of Manoa." Franky's tone was grim. "Those who are successful in stealing an Eternal Pose set out to seek the island, and they are never seen again. Their ships are later found adrift in the Florian Triangle. Since the Triangle is so close to water 7, I've salvaged a lot of those ships myself. When they're found, the decks of the ghost ships are always torn open. The weirdest part is the handful of scattered statues usually found onboard – although sometimes there are none at all. This is known as the Sea of Statues for that reason."

"I think I just got 'I don't want to be turned into a statue' disease!"

"We've already told you that there aren't enough statues on each ship to make a whole crew." Zoro insisted. "So it isn't the crew turned into statues."

"That's easily explained – all the rest of the crew and passengers jumped overboard! If a giant bird showed up and started wrecking the ship and turning people into statues, wouldn't _you_ be jumping ship?"

"No."

"Oh, right. I forgot who I was talking to."

"That segues neatly into my next question," Nami said. "If it was just a big bird with a statue devil fruit doing all this, how is it possible that it has never been defeated? How is it that nobody has managed to fight the bird or escape and tell stories about how the Sea of Statues gets its name? Even Franky and Robin haven't heard of the bird before."

"Okay, then I have 'I don't want to be killed by mysterious statues' disease!"

"Usopp, we didn't steal a pose. So we should be okay even if we do visit the island." Zoro reassured their sniper.

"Besides, people go to the island to work and most of them come back fine," Nami added.

"There's that 'most' again!"

"No matter how intense the vetting process is," Sanji mused aloud, "I can't believe that _no one _has ever managed to sneak through and infiltrate the island. It's been centuries, that should be impossible."

"I know, Sanji, but the facts speak for themselves."

-.-.-

The crew parted ways for the night, each thinking on what they had heard. Zoro knew he wasn't one of the clever ones, so it wouldn't do him any good to think too hard. (If anyone was to figure something out, it would be one of the girls) but with the information overload he couldn't help but swirl through it all through his head.

The rumors – an island of saints and demigods. No mine or devil fruit could account for all the weirdness. An impossible record of keeping a secret for centuries, even from the World Government.

Things known for sure – Large gems and lumps of precious metals. The people were disciplined and rigorous but wasteful. Ghost ships of would-be thieves found broken open, empty except for a few statues.

He wondered if any of the others were holding back on the details. He certainly was.

Zoro _had_ told the truth. Mostly. But the whole story was more complicated.

In his travels he'd seen a few fights involving the Heroes of Manoa. The warriors were highly skilled, they had beautiful techniques practiced to perfection, but they didn't have any extraordinary creativity or strength. They were simply human, yet the few fighters that came from the island were hailed as heroes and saints, working to make the world a better place and refusing to accept anything in return.

That was all true, but that wasn't everything.

It made sense in retrospect that as Zoro's infamy grew, he was compared to the Manoan warriors. Zoro had never done anything he regretted, but unlike the Manoans, he had needed to make money.

He'd needed to survive and he hunted bounties to do it. Zoro didn't regret any of his actions but that didn't mean he hadn't heard the rumors. Pirate Hunter was only the most benign of the labels that had been placed on him. He was called a monster, a demon or a beast. Rumor claimed he was born from the shadow of a Manoan warrior. Zoro was the blood-lust and chaos and darkness that had been purged from the soul of a great Manoan hero who had ascended to become a god.

He didn't much care what other people thought of him, and he had nothing against people who dedicated their lives to helping others… but the rumor had dogged Zoro so pervasively that he didn't know how he felt about these heroes of Manoa.


	5. The Sea of Statues - Chapter 4

Title: The Sea of Statues - Chapter 4  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: G  
Chapter Summary: The crew encounters a man from Manoa who doesn't seem to be afraid of them.

Zoro ended his night and went to bed at four as usual, but tonight after he removed his boots and swapped his trousers for soft sleeping pants, he didn't complete his usual ritual of flopping into bed so hard that it jostled Sanji awake.

Despite what the crap cook would tell you, Zoro didn't jolt Sanji awake solely to make the cook's life more miserable by waking him up an hour early.

Although admittedly that was a large part of the appeal.

No, Zoro woke Sanji when he went to bed because once Zoro was asleep, there was nobody else awake on the ship unless one of the others was having a bout of insomnia. It was better to have _someone_ awake, even if it was just the crap cook stewing in resentment for an hour before he got up at five to start breakfast.

But tonight was not going to be one of those nights. Luffy had chosen his cook to sleep with. The lovesick moron was enthusiastically cuddling the captain and sleepily mumbling, "Mellorine…!" while Luffy smiled goofily in his sleep.

If Zoro did his usual thing, Luffy would probably sleep through the jostling, but the crap cook got _angry_ when he found a guy in bed with him.

Angry as in, shrieking and roaring and waking-the-whole-crew angry. Then _everyone_ was up at four o'clock in the freaking morning and they all blamed Zoro and didn't let him be the only one asleep on the ship, so he was kept awake until he found somewhere to sneak off to and nap. That was unacceptable.

If that wasn't bad enough, the interrupted sleep made everyone else cranky the rest of the day.

When Sanji woke up on his own, at five, then it was his own damn fault that his freaking out woke the crew and everyone blamed _him,_ so those of them that fell asleep easily could go right back to bed.

So Zoro climbed carefully into his bunk and was asleep in seconds.

Some time later (as in, exactly an hour) there was a whole bunch of noise and chaos that Zoro didn't even bother to wake up for, and suddenly a still-warm body was scooting under Zoro's blankets and wrapping around him like a rubbery leech.

He didn't bother to fully wake up for that either.

Zoro's fingers were laced behind his head, so he unlaced his hands to draw out one arm and wind it around his temporary bedmate, threading his fingers through black hair on the head nestled under Zoro's chin.

He could feel Luffy's stomach grumbling against his own, so he knew the captain wouldn't stay with him for long once breakfast smells started drifting into the boys' bunkroom.

-.-.-

After breakfast, Zoro raised the anchor and the crew set out to sail counter-clockwise around the island.

"On the Grand Line it's impossible to tell the cardinal directions without a clear view of the sun or stars," Nami was saying. "I wonder why everyone kept saying the treasure was to the 'North' of the island instead of degrees off log point the way everyone else does?"

"Likely it's because you don't get to this island using a log pose, Navigator-san," Robin replied. "And the needle on an eternal pose to Manoa would change direction depending on what part of the island you are on. Since the skies directly above the island are clear of the Florian Triangle's fog, navigating with cardinal directions should be feasible on a clear day like today."

"I suppose you're right," Nami sighed, "The sun is still too close to the horizon to see through the mist, but once it rises far enough, we should at least be able to tell which way is east."

Zoro didn't know what the hell they were talking about. East was Orient, which he just learned also meant knowing where you are. So as long as they knew where they were then they were facing East, right?

Nami was making this all much more complicated than it needed to be.

"Still, as long as we keep circling the island, we should come upon the north end that has the treasure sooner or later, right?" Usopp added.

A few minutes later, they did not come upon treasure, but instead encountered a combination fishing-houseboat anchored off shore.

Under an umbrella on the ship's deck was a wiry old man in a fancy blue robe. He was asleep, reclined on a beach chair with his sun-hat drawn down over his face. A fishing line out in the water led to the rod nestled between the man's toes, positioned to wake him when it was jostled by something taking the bait.

As they pulled up alongside his deck, near enough to speak between the ships without raising their voices, the old man's snoring interrupted and he snuffled himself awake, reaching up and adjusting his hat to reveal his eyes sleepily peering out at the Sunny, and then going wide with realization as he woke up further.

"Oh I must have been sleeping too deeply to notice your approach. How foolish of me! Oh well, how can I help you strangers?"

"I'd like you to answer a few questions if you don't mind," Nami approached the railing and gave him her most winning smile.

"The treasure is to the North," he pointed the direction they were headed.

They waited for the rest. _Please don't kill anyone, and leave the eternal pose behind. _But it never came.

"That's not one of the questions we have."

Zoro now approached the railing and took in the details of the stranger. He had looked normal enough when they sailed up but this close the Strawhats could see a few odd details.

His robe had appeared fancy even from a distance, but now that they were close enough to see details, the robe was so different from the ordinary sun-hat that it didn't seem like they should even be on the same boat, much less the same person.

The royal blue fabric was pure silk, judging by the sheen, but that was the least of its qualities. The word "embroidery" wasn't enough to describe what adorned the garment. Richly colored silk thread was woven into thick, elaborate patterns along every seam and hem, making the entire outfit gleam in jewel tones.

Why was someone wearing that _fishing_, instead of being on a king in a court somewhere?

Who was this man? Fancy-dressed yet not afraid of them. He must have seen their Jolly Roger painted on the Sunny's sail, but he still appeared at ease.

"You don't seem afraid of us like the others," Zoro asked, "Why is that?"

"Yes. They are foolish, and far too attached to life. I am old enough to know better."

"Could you explain that?" Robin asked.

"Of course. Our trading ships hire excellent guards – the strongest that money can buy. If a pirate crew can take an eternal pose from them, there is nothing I can do, and no amount of fear will protect me. I may as well be polite."

"We didn't steal a pose. We followed a bird."

"Hmmm." He didn't seem to believe them.

"Does that happen often? I mean, how often do pirates steal an eternal pose to this island?"

"I'm afraid that's not my area of expertise. My interests are mostly art and fishing. Some of the others enjoy filling their minds with history and statistics, so you'd be better off asking them."

"Where can we find those people?"

"Oh that was silly of me. They wouldn't appreciate me giving out locations to hostile invaders like that. Our island's permanent residents stay out of the way of invasions whenever we can, you see. I'm sure I'll give up their locations under torture, but I owe it them to remain silent for as long as I am able."

He nodded, perfectly calm.

"You are one weird dude, bro."

"Hmmm."

The Strawhats looked at each other.

"Before I go back to fishing, I was planning to have some tea after my nap. I have enough sets to serve several more people if any of you wish to come aboard." He reeled in the line, stowed the fishing gear and walked inside without another word.

The crew stared after him.

"Well, guys? I guess we do the usual." Nami said, holding out the straws for everyone to draw. "The three short straws follow the man on the boat."

Franky, Robin, and Zoro ended up drawing the short straws.

The three of them climbed aboard the fishing-houseboat. Franky offered Robin a hand up, making the dark-haired woman giggle as she sprouted a dozen more hands to boost herself up and over the railing.

Franky chuckled and scratched his head, "Heh. Never mind, I guess."

"It was a nice gesture, Franky."

The three of them entered the door the old man had gone through, and stopped to look around.

The room looked like a tiny slice of beach. To their left was a life-sized sculpture of a turtle on the artful drifts of sand. Its eyes were black gems, and the scales on its skin were iridescent greenish mother of pearl. Its shell looked like patches of ombre glass with subtle hints of color peeking out from underneath through the semi-translucent material.

Behind the turtle was a sculpture palm tree. Metals in different shades of copper and bronze were braided together, wrapped around each other and wound tightly into a helix to shape the trunk. The Strawhats didn't disturb the sand to go inspect it, but from what they could see, the green fronds had the telltale sheen indicating they were made of silk. Murals on the walls were masterfully painted down to the slightest detail to look like the ocean and sky.

There was a driftwood walkway across the room leading to another door, and through it the Strawhats entered an underwater dreamscape.

Zoro didn't know how the light was doing it, but patterns of light waving across his skin looked exactly like he was swimming underwater. Looking around the room, tiny, translucent beads were arranged on the surfaces of sculptures that created perfect replicas of fan, staghorn, brain, pillar, and elkhorn corals, all arranged into a reef climbing the terraced walls. Anemones and other soft-bodied creatures made from some kind of unbelievably fine substance waved in the slight stirring of the room's air as if they were real creatures caught in ocean currents.

When Zoro looked up, he located the source of the waving lines. The whole ceiling was lit up, but filtering through some kind of constantly-stirring liquid to create the water-lines of light on everything below.

From the ceiling, on wires or threads or some other means too small to see, hung more kinds of brightly-colored fish made from ultrafine glittering gems. Some of the fish seemed _too_ brightly colored to Zoro. Did colors like that even exist in nature? Did _patterns_ like that exist? Whatever they hung from must not be very flexible, as the fish in the air were still, the only part of them that was stirring were the jellyfish's tentacles.

Now Zoro knew that these creatures _had_ to be made-up. Jellyfish didn't have filaments on their bells that shimmered in rainbow shades. None that he had seen, anyway.

They wove their way through the coral reef and opened the next door into an inferno.

Orange and red lights reflected brightly off of twisted and beaten metals that came in every shade of yellow, orange, and red, making the colors flicker around the room in a way that resembled as if it was really on fire. A sculpture of a great dragon coiled around the room, dark red scales and spiky black embellishments making it the darkest thing in the room, hard to focus on, yet shadowy and menacing. The only reflective part of the dragon was its gemstone eyes…

No… its eyes weren't just reflecting the orange light, they were _emitting_ it. Something that glowed brightly had been placed inside the head of the dragon sculpture, causing its eyes to glow and a faint orange to emit from between its dagger teeth.

"Nice! It _super_ seems like it's going to breathe fire on me." Franky cheered enthusiastically.

"I wonder what's next?" Robin mused.

The next room, of course, was completely normal-looking. Four settings of elegantly minimalist dishware waited for them on a low table surrounded by silk cushions.

"Did you like the rooms?" The old man asked politely, pouring tea from an unadorned teapot that matched the cups and saucers.

"It was quite an experience," Robin said with a smile as she gracefully knelt in front of one of the tea sets. "I can't imagine the expense of decorating such rooms."

"Oh no, I did all the work myself. And the materials were easy to come by."

"Oh? Do tell."

"Hahaha! Clever girl! But no. Outsiders are not told the secrets of Manoa so easily."

"I see."

"Yes, well, even though I can't tell you what you want to know, I do appreciate an audience for my art. Elsewhere on the ship I have other such rooms. A rainforest, a meadow of flowers and butterflies, and my most recent work – and I think it will be my last – a room to reflect the glory outer space. Planets, stars, moons, and asteroids. It is so hard to get such immensity captured in a small room, but I will accomplish it or spend the remainder of my life trying."

They all drank their tea for a minute.

"We haven't asked our questions, yet. How do you know that is what we want to know?" Zoro asked, still sipping the (surprisingly good) tea.

"It's easy enough to guess. Invaders really only have a few things they want. Money and more money. Oh, but that was rude of me! I do apologize."

"It's a fair assumption," Robin admitted, "And we did follow a bird here that was carrying a large amount of treasure in its beak."

"Yes, the Zhen bird lives on a small islet just north of Manoa. The treasure you seek is there, too."

"None of you seem to mind if we just go and take the treasure. Why is that?"

"None of us Manoans ever go near the treasure island. It's guarded by a fog of poisonous smoke that kills anything it touches. Plus the Zhenniao wouldn't like it."

"Poison smoke? And you know the bird. What else can you tell us?"

"Well, not much. Each Manoan is taught from childhood to say the same thing to invaders: The treasure is to the North, leave the eternal pose, and please don't kill anyone. That's really all that treasure-hunters need to know. Getting through the treasure's defenses like the poison fog and the Zhen is your own problem."

"Nevertheless," Robin said, "I assure you that the majority of us are not motivated by treasure. Our captain, for example, seeks only adventure. And as for myself, I am an archaeologist, and my goal on this island is to learn its true history."

The old man's gaze met Robin's, his face unreadable. "A scholar, are you?" he said, his face giving nothing away. "I see. Well that changes everything. I don't suppose I could convince the lot of you to leave the island a mystery, then?"

Robin shook her head.

"Very well. So long as you vow not to harm any citizens, I shall play tour guide for you."

"We can't do that," Zoro refused, "If we are attacked, we'll defend ourselves."

"I didn't mean it that way," the old man sighed in exasperation, "I'm offering to give you a tour of the island, to _maximize the job_, and answer your questions as best as I am able. In return I ask that you do not _attack_ the citizens."

Maximize the job? Zoro was used to having trouble with fancy words, but it was rare for him to hear a phrase where he knew all the words but still couldn't understand what they meant. At least the rest of what the old man said had made sense.

Franky shrugged, "That seems an easy enough promise to make. I'm sure the others will agree."

Both Robin and Zoro nodded their assent. Don't go picking fights, basically. Sure. Usually the fights ended up picking them.

"Excellent! We don't allow tourists here, so it will be great fun to try my hand at playing the role of guide."


	6. The Sea of Statues - Chapter 5

Title: The Sea of Statues - Chapter 5  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: PG-13  
Chapter Summary: On a tour of Manoa, a few questions are answered but even more are raised.  
Notes: Notes (and examples of what the roads look like) found at squizbee dot livejournal dot com

"Hey, this is a _super_ awkward question, old man. But I don't think we ever got your name. What do we call you?"

"That was a deliberate omission on my part," the old man replied to Franky. "I'm not overly attached to my own life, but my family is another story, and telling you who I am could put _them_ in danger, too. For now, why don't you just call me Guide?"

"Thank you for your hospitality, Guide-san," Robin said politely, "If you don't mind, I believe there are other members of our crew who would be better suited to enjoy your art."

"By all means!" the man smiled.

The three of them re-boarded the Sunny and sent over the kiddy trio. Usopp was their resident artist and Luffy and Chopper were the most easily impressed. Soon, the oohs and aahs and Luffy's exclamations of "_SUGOI_!" were drifting out across the water from the inside of Guide's ship.

When the old man came out, there were actual tears in his eyes. "An artist lives for the acknowledgement and appreciation of his work. Thank you all so much." He bowed to them and then straightened, "Now I will make my offer to you all at once."

The Strawhats quickly agreed to the old man's terms. They would not attack anyone – excepting self-defense – and in return the man would give them a tour of Manoa.

Nami wasn't thrilled about the delay in getting to the treasure, but brightened up when reminded that she would have a chance to record the mysterious island for her maps.

As they assembled along the beach to wait for the old man – minus Franky who had drawn the short straw to guard the ship – Zoro had a pretty good idea how this outing would go: Luffy would eat everything in sight. Nami would steal whatever wasn't nailed down. Sanji would noodle off after the first skirt he saw... And Zoro himself would locate a bar to plant himself in until things went south and they all got chased off the island.

It was practically a ritual.

Their guide eventually showed up, now appearing dressed for serious bushcraft rather than a royal banquet. At least _this_ outfit didn't look like two minutes of direct sunlight would slightly fade the colors and thus permanently ruin it forever.

As they traveled through the forest, Chopper and their guide fell into deep conversation.

"If you can't tell us where Manoa gets its wealth, then tell me this - it is inherent in nature that a population will expand until it exceeds available resources. How is Manoa immune to this?"

"That is a good question! The answer is that we are extremely careful to keep our population stable."

"Aha! I knew there must be a dark side to Manoa! Do you euthanize 'undesirables'? Is that it? Even keeping people from having as many children as they want is inhumane! It inevitably leads to eugenics and oppression of marginalized groups, and -"

"On the contrary!" their guide interrupted the little reindeer, "the system was carefully designed. Allow me to explain. Every citizen is allowed to have one child of their own if they marry an outsider – or two per couple, if two Manoans marry one another – which would be exactly replacement level."

"But-"

"Hold on, let me finish. Plenty of people want more children than that, and there are ways they can have them! See, when people age out of their reproductive years without having children, then they can undergo the minimally invasive sterilization procedure – to prevent accidents you see – and give away their unused child credits to someone younger who wants to have more. Similarly, when tragedies strike and people die young before having their children, then their unused credits go into a public lottery that citizens can enter to win credits for more children – those who enter the lottery gaining preference points as they age. If a Manoan is unable to find anyone to give them another child credit, and doesn't win the lottery, but still doesn't want to undergo sterilization after their last allowed child, then they can freely move away – can take some or all of their family with them if they want – and permanently go to the outside world. If they do that, then the number of Manoans that were lost to the outside world is immediately put into the lottery as child credits for replacement."

"Okay, I suppose that isn't as bad as I thought... How often do people leave?"

"It almost never happens. A citizen's needs here are guaranteed, whereas in the outside world, people toil under backbreaking labor all their waking hours in meaningless and unfulfilling jobs, and if they're lucky they earn a bare subsistence survival in return. Otherwise they simply perish of poverty."

"That's a very gloomy way to look at it, but I suppose it's not wrong."

"Look!" the guide indicated the buildings appearing through the gaps in the trees. "We've reached the main village of Manoa. Let me show you its wonders!"

-.-.-

Zoro had never spent so much time looking at the ground. He was starting to get a crick in his neck.

The people ran indoors as soon as they spotted the Strawhat Pirates, leaving only Guide to tell them about the place.

Their guide knew little about the architecture of the houses and other buildings – though it was obvious at a glance that each one was a masterpiece of some kind – but the old man was extremely fixated on the roads themselves, obviously having some kind of personal stake in them.

"This one is simple, but one of my favorites. The floret pentagonal tiling!"  
"This one is called something like 'snub hextille'. Forgive my faulty memory."  
"This is another especially beautiful floral one. She likes using these in residential areas"  
"Rhombitrihexagonal tiling… or was it rhombihexadeltille? Hmmm…"  
"I can't remember the name of this one – I always just called it 'Sunburst'!"  
"And its brother – Starburst!"

The Strawhats' eyes were starting to go crossed at all the dizzying patterns.

"Now this… is Main Street!"

"How… how are you supposed to use a street that's made of cubes…?" Chopper tilted his head in confusion.

"Ahaha! I love it when someone sees this for the first time! Come closer, you'll see it's perfectly flat, the tumbling blocks are just an illusion."

As they stepped onto the street, they saw it was, indeed, a flat surface that only looked three dimensional.

"There's a triangle one I could show you too, if you like."

"Uh, no, thanks." Nami groaned.

"Dude. Who _does_ all this?" Usopp asked.

The old man beamed, "This was all my daughter! She is truly special. We have so many artists and architects and gardeners and fashion designers and so, so many scholars in Manoa – and they all do amazing work – but my daughter, she looked at the pavement of _roads_, of all things, and said 'I can make _this_ my life."

"Oh? Tell me more about your daughter." Robin asked as they began walking again.

"She's wonderful. To _maximize her work_, she studied two solid decades to become a mathematician, a machinist, and a materials engineer. And she did it! Since she isn't paving with traditional square setts, she needs to make each individual piece out of the strongest available materials, so that they will last for a long time under the stresses of temperature change and erosion and pressure from traffic on the roads. She has engineered a substance so strong it has been compared to the stone of poneglyphs, and can be made in a number of contrasting shades and colored tints without compromising the strength. These roads will last for centuries! The trouble is, the material is so strong and the setts must be shaped with such precision that it is horridly difficult to make each one, especially the more complicated shapes. It took her nearly a decade to design the machinery and write the software for her laser-guided cutting tools. I confess I don't much understand it, simple artist and fisherman that I am."

"You used that term "to maximize" before, when you were talking about being a guide. Now you used it for your daughter. What does that mean?" Chopper asked.

"Ah, sorry. I'm not used to speaking with outsiders. Maximize is a word here in Manoa that means making something the best it could possibly be. It's quite the coincidence you should bring that up now, considering what you're about to see… and now we've reached it! – The work that is going to be her masterpiece."

Even Zoro boggled at the… whatever he was seeing.

"This is an important road to her – it leads to a place that is very close to her heart. She said this one was a thing called "Topological square tiling distorted into spiraling I shapes" – excuse me if I didn't say that exactly right. The setts are so complicated it takes days for her machines to carve each one. She will be working on this road for the rest of her life. Then, an apprentice – either her own child or someone else whose passion matches hers – will take over for her, and possibly even a whole generation after that one before the road is finished."

These were just the roads, Zoro thought, looking down as he walked. Just _roads_ \- a surface you traveled on. A part of the world so small and insignificant that Zoro had never bothered to notice them. The old man knew about the roads because of his daughter. What about all the things he didn't know about?

What else were they passing by that they weren't even noticing, but that someone had… _maximized_ at some point, making something ordinary into a thing of wonder? If the Manoans weren't always running away at the sight of the Strawhats, what other crazy shit would they be learning about Manoa?

Zoro looked up and realized he was alone. Had the others gotten lost again? And the guide, too! Man, everyone sure was incompetent.

He continued along, following street after weirdly-patterned street, until he reached something new. This was not like the residential and business districts that the guide had taken them on, this was some kind of industrial park. Zoro rounded a corner just in time to see an enormous hydraulic press crush something metallic between two semi-transparent plates. When the machine opened back up, workers removed a flattened and roughly disc-shaped lump of metal from the compartment.

A brown-haired woman in a hard hat, safety goggles, and work clothes approached Zoro, "Hey! Why aren't you weari- Oh, hello. I don't recognize you. Are you an invader or a worker?"

"…Neither," Zoro answered after a moment. "I'm looking for a bar."

The woman hesitated for a moment but then smiled, "The bar we go to after work is that way."

He started off in the direction she indicated, only to be brought up short as she snagged his elbow and led him in another direction.

Why had she pointed him the wrong way if she had wanted him to go a different direction? Tsh. Whatever.

They stopped in front of a decently bar-like establishment and she left him at the door.

Zoro went inside to see that the inside of the bar matched the outside. Billiards, darts, tables and chairs, and a long bar complete with bartender gave the place the look of a typical West Blue bar.

A person of indeterminate gender was currently tending the bar. The bartender had a shaved head, olive skin, and kohl-lined eyes. Their outfit made of intricate patterns of brightly colored beads marked them as probably a Manoan.

"Hello!" they said. Their eyes scanned Zoro, taking in his battered boots, worn canvas trousers and cheap Henley shirt. "Are you a worker or invader?"

"I'm a customer."

"Okay! Let me start you off with one drink on the house. I've been practicing this recently."

The bartender took a bottle from the rack and sent it spinning rapidly on the palm of their hand. Suddenly the bottle was snatched and flung, end over end, into the air as the bartender's hands blurred, arranging a glass and ice before catching the bottle at the right angle above the glass to hold it perfectly still as a precise amount of the brown liquid poured out.

Their hands gave another flick and the bottle spun again before sliding neatly back into the rack.

The last spin had been a sleight-of-hand distraction, as the bartender produced a lighter, took a mouthful of something Zoro couldn't see, then flicked the lighter and blew flames across Zoro's drink.

The flames caught the alcohol and burned blue above the rim of the glass for a few seconds before flickering out.

"There!" The bartender whooped and jumped into the air, pumping their fist. "It worked! I've been working on that one so long… you don't want to know how many bottles I've dropped practicing. …And I didn't even set anything on fire this time!"

"Uh…" Zoro said intelligently.

"Sai!" came a voice as someone barreled out from the back room, "Didn't I tell-"

The newcomer was a woman with an accent Zoro had never heard before. She had very pale skin, short orange hair, and a kerchief tied around her head to hang down over one eye. A couple of visible scars indicated she had been in a few fights.

"Sai, go in back. Let me handle this."

The newly-named Sai muttered something that sounded rude in a voice too quiet for anyone but Zoro to notice. As they disappeared into the back room the new bartender approached Zoro, looking him up and down, eyes lingering on his swords. "Let me guess… did one of the dojo masters bring you in as a guest instructor? You must be pretty good with a sword if they went through all the effort to bring you to Manoa."

"I'm decent with a sword, I guess."

"I bet. So where are you from? You're not Manoan."

"East Blue," Zoro eyed the glass of booze suspiciously. "Is that okay to drink? It was just on fire."

The woman laughed. "It's fine. Sai takes any chance to practice so they can _maximize_ their bartending. They aren't ready to take their skills out of Manoa, but soon they'll be ready to add dance moves and acrobatics to the performance mixology."

"What is _with_ this place?" Zoro said, mostly to himself.

"I can answer that if you want," the bartender said, sitting down and pouring herself a drink – thankfully normally. She clinked her glass against Zoro's suspicious mix and threw back the liquor with a practiced motion.

"Go ahead," Zoro picked up his drink and finally swallowed. It tasted normal, at least. Although it was higher quality than he was used to.

"You know how everywhere else in the world children are scared by stories of the boogeyman? Well here in Manoa, the stories are about the Celestial Dragons."

"…Oh?" Zoro prompted once it seemed she was waiting for a response from him.

She continued while refilling their drinks, "Becoming complacent, lazy and useless is considered the worst possible fate in Manoan culture. The spoiled world nobles are the worst thing the Manoans could become if they allowed themselves. Children here are terrorized with stories that would make your skin crawl. It's why they're such workaholics, and why 'good' is never good enough."

"That explains a lot." Zoro thought back on all he had heard about Manoans as he finished his next drink. The liquor was finer than he was used to, the subtle flavor hiding the potency of the alcohol. The bartender poured him another one.

"You don't talk much, do you? I don't mind. It's nice just to see a new face once in a while." Both of them rapidly knocked back their drinks.

That didn't seem to need a response. Zoro scrutinized his empty glass and looked at the light reflecting off the ice.

"Sorry about sending Sai away. I didn't know whether you were hostile, and Sai has so much potential it would be a shame if they were killed so young by some random invader."

Zoro grunted.

"It's rare for a Manoan to take up bartending," the woman continued their one-sided conversation. "Manoans only do things that can be _maximized_, and most people don't see the skill and art involved in simply pouring drinks. They think there's a limit to how good you can get at it. Once you know every drink and how to make them, what more is there to learn? Sai saw the potential for more."

"Do you get invaders here very often?" Zoro asked, wondering whether she had her scars before she came to Manoa, or if they were more… recent. Some of them looked pretty fresh.

"Ha! You'd be amazed," the woman grinned at him, "Most Manoans think the invaders are only after treasure, but I know better. They're after treasure _and_ a place for a good drink and a good brawl. Most of 'em stop in here since we're the closest bar to Treasure Island. I never let Sai take those shifts – some of the invaders are also looking for fresh meat, if you know what I mean."

Zoro grimaced.

"Can't say it's all bad, though. Once in a while some of the invaders aren't bad looking. Y'know…"

Just then there were running steps outside and the door to the bar flew open.

"ZORO! Zoro, You have to see this!" Nami burst in looking frantic. "Quick! We need your help!" She was off like a shot.

"Well, that's my cue," Zoro said, finishing his drink. "How much do I owe?"

The bartender said a number that made Zoro's jaw drop open and his eyes flick briefly to the open door.

"Bahahaha! Don't worry about it. Just pay whatever you have, and to repay the rest just don't kill anyone on the island."

"…You knew the whole time that I was here as a pirate, not a worker."

"You got it. Though I was hoping I'd have enough time to persuade you to go back to my place for a while, if you know what I mean."

Zoro blamed the heat in his face on the alcohol as he left the bar.


	7. The Sea of Statues - Chapter 6

Title: The Sea of Statues - Chapter 6  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: G  
Notes: LOTS OF NOTES in the squizbee livejournal

Nami left Usopp outside the bar to guide Zoro to whatever had her so worked up. After a few minutes of walking they stepped out between two fancy buildings to see the rest of the Strawhats (minus Franky) arranged on a pier extending out over the water, passing by Guide who was patiently waiting for them on shore.

The two of them made their way to the others and stood with them. Nami pointed out to sea, but the gesture was unnecessary.

On an island across a short expanse of water, a mountain of treasure gleamed on the horizon.

The rays of the setting sun caught gold and silver in a blinding glitter, large translucent gemstones of every imaginable color bent the rays into rainbow lights that splashed across the sea.

As they stood, staring in awe, Nami seemed to snap out of her stupor as an idea seized her. She looked around at the rapidly emptying docks. It was sunset, so most of the local seacraft had returned and been tied up for the night. Her eyes scanned the nearby boats and she fixed her gaze on a small wooden rowboat that seemed unattended.

"Nami, NO!" Usopp yelled as the navigator lunged.

Nami pulled up short, not due to Usopp's shout, but Robin's devil fruit limbs holding her fast. The navigator's grasping fingers flailed, waving inches from the line mooring the boat to the dock.

"It's like they're daring someone to take them," Sanji mused as he scanned the pier. Many of the fishing and passenger boats tied on the dock were moored with simple ropes and easily-undone knots. "Even in a peaceful port, this seems naïve." He flicked a glance at the gleaming mountain of treasure.

Nami finally went limp in Robin's grasp, turning a long yearning look to the treasure so near. The dark-haired archaeologist stepped up to lead the navigator away from the boat she had been so determined to steal and row to the mountain of wealth.

"Navigator-san," Robin gently urged, "we ought to get back to the Sunny and figure out how much treasure it can hold, yes?"

"Right!" Nami immediately rallied, "We will calculate every cubic centimeter available on the Sunny, assuming we empty out all our supplies and sleep under the stars!"

"Uh, Nami?" Usopp said skeptically, "There might be a few problems with that…"

"You can't eat treasure," Sanji said grimly. "We need to keep our supplies." He shuddered, and just like that the Strawhats' cheerful mood went dark.

-.-.-

The sky was pitch black by the time the Strawhats returned to the Sunny, evening long since passed into night. They dropped off Guide at his houseboat and boarded their ship.

Franky had the Sunny's deck lit up nicely, and the cyborg shipwright was hanging out on a lawn chair not far from Strawman. Since coming aboard, the straw statue had been moved around a bit before finally taking up semi-permanent residence by the swing.

"Franky, I need you to calculate exactly how much space is available on the Sunny for treasure!" Nami had no time at all for pleasantries.

"Sorry Nami-sis. It's not the available space that is going to limit you. It's the weight."

"But Franky!" Nami wailed, "I thought Adam wood would be strong enough to hold any amount of treasure!"

"Strength is not the problem. Adam wood will keep the weight of the treasure from cracking the hull beneath it, yes, but the buoyancy is the real issue. If we filled every cubic centimeter the way you're asking, we would be at the bottom of the sea."

"Nooooo!"

Luffy giggled, "Sorry, Nami. And no we can't dump our supplies to make the ship lighter either." That was as close as he ever got to a rebuke.

"What about leaving behind unnecessary crewmembers to lighten the load?" Sanji asked, eyeing Zoro.

Zoro flipped him off.

Chopper mumbled something incoherent, and the others looked at him curiously for a moment before realizing how far it was past his usual bedtime.

"Shall we return to this topic tomorrow, then?" Robin asked lightly.

"Right!" Nami declared, "We'll be setting sail at first light tomorrow, no excuses!"

Zoro decided that he should go to bed earlier than usual tonight. It sounded like tomorrow was going to be a long day with little opportunity to nap.

But first, he needed his workout.

Zoro kept himself entertained this time by timing his blinks to happen on the exact middle of each squat for one hundred reps, then at the two-thirds mark for another hundred, then at the very beginning of the rep for another hundred...

Damn, he was starting to agree with Luffy that the crew _badly_ needed a musician. At least then he'd have something to listen to.

The workout was finally over. Zoro toweled off and went in search of Usopp, hoping to catch him before he went to bed.

The sniper was one of the night owls on the crew, going to bed well after midnight most nights. Their newly-acquired shipwright had a similar schedule, judging by the few days they've had him aboard so far. The two of them seemed to have bonded.

"Usopp, I could use your help in the crow's nest if you have the time." Zoro stuck his head into the work room to find Usopp and Franky both wrapping things up for the night.

"Sure, Zoro. Gimme a minute." Usopp wiped the grease off his hands and put the last of his tools away.

"See you bros tomorrow," Franky raised one enormous hand in farewell. His reaction was infinitely less irritating than, Nami's sarcastic wolf whistles or Sanji's sneering innuendos at this particular ritual.

Zoro returned to the crow's nest, tossing a sheet over the offensive aspects of the perverted massage table before Usopp climbed into the room – and Zoro left his trousers ON, thank you very much. Then he shed his shirt and climbed on the table.

In a way, the timid sniper was the single most talented member of their crew. Zoro had no use for art - drawing or painting or sculpture - nor did he know enough about chemistry to appreciate fireworks and whatever the hell else Usopp could do. Some of the sniper's other talents were marginally more useful - His stories kept the more energetic members of the crew entertained, meaning they spent less time driving the rest of them crazy, and his games burned off some of their excess energy – Luffy alone was enough, so why did the others also have to be so damn noisy?

All that aside, Usopp had more important talents. If he hadn't taken so easily to carpentry, Merry wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as she had, his marksmanship had saved their collective asses more than once, and his ingenuity designing weapons had given Nami a fighting chance – which Zoro appreciated even though she was a greedy witch. At least she could hold her own in battle now.

Most importantly – in Zoro's opinion – Usopp had proclaimed himself God of Massage. Zoro didn't even try to dispute the lies he came up with. Sure, fine, he got his magic hands as a gift from a genie he had freed, or after winning a bet with the devil, or being trained by a mountaintop sensei after a grueling seven-year trial. Yes, sure, he had done all of that and more.

However he got it, Usopp had an almost supernatural ability to manipulate strained and exhausted muscles in exactly the right way, working out the soreness that had been a constant in Zoro's life. Not only did their approximately every-other-day massage routine make Zoro's training regimen more bearable, it accelerated healing and allowed him to train even harder. Some small part of Zoro's increased strength could be credited to their cowardly liar.

Usopp had a habit of talking during their sessions. He started with his usual stories and wild boasts while he worked on the thick muscles on either side of Zoro's spine. But once Usopp's hands radiated out across his shoulders, the sniper moved on to talking about whatever he was currently working on. Sometimes the topic turned more serious– he had talked a lot about Merry's repairs since they had entered the Grand Line.

Today the sniper talked about Manoa, as he extended one of Zoro's arms up over his head and dug mercilessly into a particularly stubborn knot in the swordsman's back. Zoro was busy trying not to do anything undignified like drool or make embarrassing noises at the sweet agony of all that tension and soreness being beaten out of him.

"This place gives me a really bad feeling, Zoro." Usopp finally sighed and gave Zoro's back a pat, indicating he was done.

For his part, Zoro had turned into a pile of goo and wasn't sure if he even had bones anymore.

"Why is so much treasure still sitting there?" Usopp continued, taking a seat a few chairs away, on the seat Zoro remembered could turn into a gurney. "Here, on the Grand Line, how has nobody before us been able to get past some measly little poison fog and a bird?"

Zoro's body decided that okay, maybe he was still able to move after all, if reluctantly. He pushed himself up on the massage table and sat on it for a moment getting his bearings, staring down at his feet dangling over the floor.

"Everyone who has ever been strong enough or sneaky enough that they successfully took an eternal pose from the Manoan traders… and none of them were strong enough or sneaky enough to get away with the treasure. What makes us so sure we'll do any better?"

"Do _you_ want to bring that up to Nami?" Zoro replied drily, the post-massage wooziness loosening his tongue, "Right. You go ahead and tell the greedy witch to leave all that treasure behind without even trying to beat the bird. I'll wait here."

"Jeez, Zoro. You don't have to be like that about it," Usopp pouted at him, "I'm just concerned is all."

Zoro sighed, feeling a little guilty. "Whatever it is that guards the treasure, we'll fight it," he reassured the sniper.

"…And if we can't fight, we'll just have to be lucky." He hadn't meant to say the last part out loud, but there it was.

Since Zoro started his journey, there were three fights where he had fought and he had failed. Then, all that he had left was luck. Each of those times his luck had come through for him, and his opponent had chosen to not kill him.

Hawk Eyes. Enel. Aokiji.

Those were the three opponents he had been completely helpless against. Those three could have taken his life, and for a variety of reasons none of them had.

All the crazy training Zoro did was to ensure that that sort of thing didn't happen again. He would never be helpless before an opponent again. He would make sure of it.

"Let's go to bed, Usopp."

Luffy was nowhere to be found as they joined the others in the men's bunkroom, so he must be with one of the girls tonight.

It was hours earlier than Zoro was used to going to bed, but he was lucky tonight and fell asleep quickly.

-.-.-

Morning came too soon, bringing Nami pounding on the door well before dawn and hollering everyone awake. Sunrise was at seven and they needed to be ready to go by then.

Everyone groaned and dragged themselves out of bed. Sanji was the only one of the guys used to being awake at this wretched hour, and he was already in the galley making breakfast.

As the crew left their rooms, Zoro could tell immediately that Luffy had chosen Robin last night.

The dark-haired woman seemed softer, somehow. Her movements were lighter. Luffy worked as a kind of comfort to her that she had never had before.

When the group of them trooped out onto the deck to go to the galley, they discovered that they weren't the only ones awake. Also an early riser, it seemed, was Guide. He stood at the railing nearest the Sunny and smiled over at them.

"Hello, pirate friends! Before you go off on your journey, I'd like to thank you again for viewing my art yesterday – and not attacking any civilians too, of course. Here, I have written a thank-you note in gratitude." He folded a piece of paper into a paper airplane and sailed it over to the Sunny. Nami caught the paper and looked at it in disbelief.

"Shouldn't _we_ be thanking _you_ for the guided tour? And for hosting some of us for tea?"

"I don't think any of our crew have been properly trained in etiquette," Robin mused aloud.

"Have a nice trip!" Guide waved to them, completely ignoring the girls' chatter. Then he turned and went back inside his boat.

With a collective shrug, the Strawhats went to eat breakfast.

-.-.-

As per Nami's demand, they were on the way at sunrise. A few hours later the treasure island came into view. They stopped and dropped anchor in the small strait between the treasure island and the Guatavita harbor.

Nami climbed onto a box to deliver orders combined with a motivational speech, Nami-style.

"Okay everyone. We are going to get that treasure NO MATTER WHAT.

"Robin! Take the last of our money and get every book you can find about that island!

"Usopp! After you drop Robin at the shore, you'll take the Mini Merry and get a sample of that poison.

"Chopper! When Usopp returns, make an antidote to that poison, in case one of us is accidentally exposed.

"Franky! Engineer something to protect us from the poison, whatever it turns out to be.

"Any questions?"

"Yeah, who put you in charge?" Zoro was promptly cracked over the head by Nami's fist and barely drew Wado in time to block Sanji's kick.

"Why do I have to go to the poison island?" Usopp complained

"You don't have to go ashore. Just get a sample! It won't be able to hurt you if you don't breathe or touch it– probably."

"What do you mean 'Probably?!' And I HAVE to breathe!"

"I may have an answer to that," Franky interjected, "The Mini Merry isn't the only new craft in the Soldier Dock system!"

There was a break for gushing over the Shark Submerge.

"So I don't have to leave the sub, that should protect me from the poison!" Usopp crowed, much more enthused about his task now that it wasn't a suicide mission.

"We still don't know what it is. It could be a corrosive gas that dissolves its container and will destroy the submarine with Usopp still trapped inside," Robin mused.

"AAAAUGH!"

"You're not helping, Robin."

"We'll find out more after - _if_ \- you get back."

"AUUUGGH!"

"Robin, no more scaring our sniper just because you think it's funny."

Zoro decided he had nothing to do here, so he would nap.

"Zoro! Since the Mini Merry has room for three people and Franky hasn't been to the island, you accompany him. You're both responsible for making sure the other gets back by noon!"

Zoro groaned.

-.-.-

Following Franky around wasn't like following Luffy. Instead of following his nose to the nearest restaurant, Franky headed straight for the same industrial park Zoro had wandered into the day before. Oddly, even though it was late morning there was no one around today for the big cyborg to talk to.

"Well it's definitely not a mining operation," the big cyborg mused, "I don't see any signs. No mountains of waste rock and slag, no muffled explosions, no large machinery or dirt-covered miners with pickaxes..."

When they got to the big press, Franky made noises of amazement and started to babble excitedly.

"Whoa! That's the biggest hydraulic press I've ever seen. The thing's got to be eight meters in diameter. Look at that surface! You know what that is? That's diamond. You don't get it? Look at the surface, see those scratches? There's nothing that can scratch diamond. Nothing… except more diamond. For some asinine reason, they're drastically reducing the value of their diamonds by breaking them. Why the hell would they do something like that?"

Zoro shrugged, "They weren't crushing diamonds yesterday."

"What, you saw people using this yesterday? What were they putting inside?"

"Uh… something metal?"

Franky made motions urging him to continue, but Zoro just stared at him blankly.

The cyborg deflated in theatrical disappointment.

The next hour or so continued about like that. Franky spent fully half the time gushing over enormous laser cutting machines. Something about "thermal stress cracking," and "vaporization increasing absorptivity."

Now Zoro had more stupid words to try and figure out during his next training session.

They left the eerily-empty industrial park and met an (empty-handed?) Robin at the Mini Merry.

-.-.-

Back on the ship, Usopp had returned with a few vials of the poison fog that clung to the lower altitudes of the treasure island. Chopper was working on an antidote and Franky left to begin testing potential protective equipment.

Zoro finally got to his nap.

During lunch, everyone took a break on the lawn deck and Nami questioned Robin on the fruitfulness of her research. The rest of the crew gathered around in interest.

"The Manoans hide their library and historical records quite well," Robin replied, "I managed to surprise and restrain a few of them before they could run away, but all they will say is the line about leaving the eternal pose and not killing anyone. So I have no documented sources about the island. I did, however, talk to some of the workers here on Manoa.

"The workers had no more concrete information than we do, only rumors. But you already know my stance on myth containing a grain of truth. One of the three rumors is that the treasure is fake, made of plastic. Another rumor is that it's a test for screening the workers. That any worker who gives in to the temptation to go to Treasure Island suddenly vanishes shortly after they come back and is never seen again. The last rumor is that the poison fog on the island is biological in origin – specifically that it comes from a dragon. Several circumstances make that unlikely, but everyone I talked to referred to the poison as 'dragon's breath'."

"Well that's something at least, Robin-chwan. It's a shame about the lack of books though."

"Indeed. Nevertheless, I found something in our own library that may be of assistance. Look." She drew out a thick and old-looking book entitled _The Complete Encyclopedia of Mythological Creatures_, and turned to the page she desired.

"Whoooa!" Luffy gasped. "That's definitely the bird we saw!"

The page was titled 'Zhenniao,' and on it was a full-color picture of the bird they had seen carrying the treasure.

"It is undoubtedly the creature we saw. The artist clearly observed at least one of these animals at length and in detail, which is an encouraging sign for the accuracy of the text in the description."

"But didn't the bird we saw have an orange beak?" Chopper asked, tilting his head.

"Yes. The beak is a different color than I remember, but that could be explained in a number of ways. Different subpopulations of a species can have differences in coloration, or an individual's coloration could change over time, or either the artist or ourselves may have encountered a mutation. I am hoping for those possibilities rather than the chance that the artist was taking artistic license or working from incomplete information, both of which would compromise the trustworthiness of the text itself."

"What does the text say?"

"The text focuses mostly on the creature's relationship to poison. The Zhen is immune to all poison, and is itself toxic due to its diet of venomous serpents. Its feathers can be used in assassination attempts, but its meat is too foul for anyone to be fool enough to eat it."

If a few of the Strawhats flicked a glance at Luffy, well, nobody was going to call them out on it.

Robin turned to another page further in the book, "Here, then, is the entry for dragons. Just in case there is something to the rumors. There are several subtypes, and one of them," she turned to an entry, "- indeed breathes poison smoke. We may be wise to remain alert on the island, especially due to this," she pointed at part of the page. "Here it says that a dragon's greed is its primary drive. Dragons love treasure so much that it draws them like a physical force. In fact, it says that enough treasure gathered together would be able lure a dragon out of death itself."

-.-.-

It was nearing three o'clock in the afternoon by the time Chopper and Franky were satisfied with their antidote and protective gear respectively. They had five hours until sunset, and were more than capable of working during the night if necessary.

The Sunny approached the treasure island and anchored just offshore. Nami stomped up onto the lawn deck and stood in front of the arranged crew.

"Alright, listen up, numbskulls! We're limited by weight, so we're gonna make it goddamn _count_!" she pulled out a chart, "Here, I've drawn this up for you. Now this gemstone is taaffeite, you can identify it by its double refraction. The next one is what a black opal looks like, easy to identify at a glance. The next one is alexandrite, note that it's highly pleochroic, and will appear blue-green under natural light. The next one is benitoite, it's bright blue and glows brightly under blacklights - I'll have Franky make us some. This next one is…"

"Nami-swan, there's no way the idiots are going to remember all that," Sanji gently chided, neglecting to mention that he was one of the idiots in question.

"But these are all things that are more valuable by weight than go-o-o-old!" she wailed, "and even worse, it's not like you dingleberries can even properly tell 12-karat from 24-karat gold either!"

"Navigator-san, perhaps it would be better if we brought promising-looking treasure onto the ship in multiple loads, and you can sort through to find the most valuable pieces to keep. The rest would be returned to the island."

"Robin, I love you."

"I also love you, Robin-chwaaan~!"

Robin smiled.

"Well, how about some easy guidelines then? Listen up! A paper of any currency of any value weighs about a gram, and one gram of gold is worth slightly under 5,000 beri. Therefore any note of 5,000 beri or more is worth more than its weight in gold. Anything less would be weight better used for gold itself, got it? Some gems are worth more than their weight in gold, so bring me gems. Most importantly, bring me gold. Leave all coins where they are, since they are universally cut with cheaper metals. Validated 24 karat ingots are ideal, but jewelry is fine, too. The fancier it looks, the more likely it is to be 24 karat. Also bring me platinum. Don't worry about confusing it with silver – out here in the elements, silver will quickly tarnish while platinum retains its shine."

"Gold, highly-shiny silver, gemstones, and paper currency more than 5,000 beri," Sanji muttered to himself.

It was decided that the Strawhats with the most upper body strength – Luffy, Zoro, and Franky in that order – would climb the mountain of treasure and carry down loads of anything that looked promising. Usopp and Franky would set up a cola-powered ski-lift-inspired system of buckets on a pulley to bring the treasure to the ship and the rejected items back to shore. Usopp and Sanji would load and dump the buckets from the piles brought down by the crew's muscle. Nami and Robin would remain on the ship as the final appraisers of the treasure brought to them by the bucket system.

Everyone who was going to the island suited up in Franky's hazmat suits, and the Mini Merry ferried them to shore in several groups.

Stepping out of the boat, Zoro finally set foot on the treasure island.


	8. The Sea of Statues - Chapter 7

Title: The Sea of Statues - Chapter 7  
Author: c2t2  
Rating: T  
Chapter Summary: Gathering treasure, new mysteries, and an intense conversation.  
AN: notes and explanations - squizbee dot livejournal dot com

As Zoro took a few steps away from the Mini Merry, gray fog swirled around his hazmat suit as the poison in the air was disturbed. There were no signs of life, no shellfish or seaweed or scavenging birds here on the beach. There was no treasure on the beach either. All of it had been piled into a mountain above the high tide line.

Luffy, Zoro, and Franky lined up at the base of the mountain as Sanji and Usopp were setting up the conveyor belt of buckets.

Small tendrils of the fog were trailing down the mountainside, following the pull of gravity to amass at the base of the mountain.

"Be _super_ careful, everyone," Franky warned, "Undifferentiated treasure has a highly variable angle of repose, so you'll need to watch for landslides along with the poison fog and whatever else guards this island."

Zoro and Luffy made noises of acknowledgement – although they didn't understand what a few of the words meant – and the three of them took off in different directions uphill. Soon the shore and the other two climbers were obscured by the poison fog.

Zoro started off looking for paper money. He didn't know squat about appraising gold and gems, but he could read a 5,000 beri note as easily as anyone.

But as Zoro climbed, a few strange things started becoming apparent.

First, there was no paper money. None. The bird had been carrying treasure that included paper money, Zoro remembered, but he could see none of it on his climb up the mountain.

Had exposure to the elements decomposed it?

Had the poison smoke dissolved it?

If the first one was true, there would at least be traces of the money left, right? But no paper remnants were visible among the treasure on the mountain.

Another thing he noticed were the clocks.

At least, he thought they were clocks. They looked like grandfather clocks except for a few details. Zoro ignored them at first, but eventually he had passed so many that he grew curious.

Zoro approached one. It was about two meters tall, and looked like any other ordinary grandfather clock except for the face.

There were no hands on the face, only a small, six-pointed asterisk in the very center. And there were four symbols around the edge – one each at the twelve, three, six, and nine o'clock positions. They didn't look like anything he had ever seen before, so Zoro moved on.

A minute later, Zoro approached another one. When he scrutinized it, it was identical to the one before it. Zoro looked around at the nearby treasure. Was the surrounding treasure the same as before? Had he doubled back accidentally? Had he been doubling back over and over to this one clock the whole time?

That wasn't possible. First Zoro did _not_ have a problem with directions, damn it! Secondly, he had been going uphill this whole time, and the Law of Up prevented him from accidentally going in circles.

Right?

Just in case, Zoro picked up an ornate (and completely useless in combat) sword and stood it up in the treasure next to the clock. Then he continued climbing.

A minute later, he saw another clock. He approached it and sighed in relief when there was no ornate sword standing next to it, or anywhere else nearby for that matter.

Following a sudden hunch, Zoro carefully picked his way back down the slope, looking not for the clock, but for the sword.

When he found it, he didn't know what to think.

The sword was standing upright in the treasure. A clock _was_ visible, but it wasn't near the sword. It was standing in a completely different pile of treasure.

Either the mountain of treasure had an army of moving grandfather clocks, or the same clock was following him around, appearing in a new place once the one before it had travelled out of sight.

Zoro drew Wado and slashed a shallow cut into the body of the grandfather clock. He continued climbing until he saw another one and approached it. There was no slash mark visible on the new one. This wasn't a single clock that was following him around.

So he slid back downhill again. He was risking wearing a rut in the side of the mountain.

Once he spotted a clock – in yet another pile near the still-standing ornate sword – he approached it again.

No slash mark.

What.

Were a bunch of new, identical clocks popping in and out of existence all over the mountain? What did that mean?

Zoro resolved to keep an eye on it, but as long as it wasn't hindering his progress in any way, he supposed he would ignore its presence.

Zoro continued to climb the mountain.

He passed a few more clocks, but more importantly, he still didn't see any stacks of beri notes.

He was still wondering at the lack of paper money when he reached the top of the mountain.

At the very apex of the mountain of treasure, there was a crater, and in the crater was...

Well, Zoro had found the origin of the fog. And it didn't look like a dragon. …Not any kind of dragon he'd ever heard of.

The gray poison smoke was billowing violently out of a black sphere hovering above the ground in the exact center of the mountaintop crater. Zoro slid his way into the crater, and in a few minutes got close enough to the black sphere to judge that it was about three meters across. Instinct warned him not to get any closer.

So Zoro stopped.

It was eerily quiet, but not completely silent on the mountaintop. The billowing smoke was moving with such ferocity that it seemed like it should be making a lot of noise, but the smoke itself made no sound.

Instead, there was screaming.

Coming from the strange black sphere was more than smoke. Also emitting from the blackness were the faint sounds of distant screams.

He couldn't make out any details of the voices, but the faraway screams made the hair on his neck stand up as he took a few steps back, eyeing the black mass with extreme caution.

"What is going on here?" he muttered to himself. The only response to his question came in the form of more screaming and smoke from the black sphere.

Zoro's skillset mostly amounted to cutting things. And try as he might, he couldn't see how cutting the sphere would help the situation in any way.

What was he supposed to do here?

This was beyond Zoro's job description. He'd take the information to the rest of the crew and they'd decide what to do then.

Zoro climbed out of the crater, passing the grandfather clock on the lip of the crater that Zoro was positive had not been there before.

He couldn't return empty-handed, though. He'd been sent up here to bring down treasure for Nami to sort through. He'd delayed long enough.

Zoro finally accepted that he wasn't going to find any stacks of paper money at all, never mind beri notes, never mind beri notes worth 5,000 or more. So he'd grab some other stuff instead.

Nami wanted things more valuable than gold, and most of those things seemed to be gemstones. So Zoro would grab gemstones.

That seemed logical enough, so Zoro carefully picked his way down the mountain, grabbing the occasional bejeweled item or some of the larger freestanding gems. The silvery-looking stuff was all tarnished, most of it nearly black, so he ignored that along with the huge piles of coins. Same with the copper – much of which had turned green. This stuff had been here for a while. He left the antique-looking things and ceremonial items as well, unless there were particularly interesting-looking gemstones on them.

Then there was gold. Lots and lots of gold. Gold in all shapes and sizes. Nami was looking for something about gold that had to do with the number 24, Zoro remembered. Most of the gold bullion had no numbers on it, so he only picked up the stuff that was also jewel-encrusted.

Then he came upon a few bricks that had "24KT" stamped on them. Eureka.

Zoro quickly filled the bags he'd brought with him, and continued down the mountain, pausing only to trade some of his items out for others he'd found that looked more promising.

He ignored the clocks.

Zoro had been navigating using the Law of Up, so when he re-emerged on the beach, he was confident he wasn't too far from where he'd started. But somehow, even the Law of Up failed him this time, and it was a great deal of walking along the coast before the poison fog hovering on the shore parted and brought him in sight of the Mini Merry and the bucket crew.

"Nice of you to show up, Marimo," Sanji snarled at him irately, "Where the hell have you been all this time?"

Zoro briefly considered making a 'your mother' joke, or just cutting the bastard, but eventually settled for sneering at him as he plopped his bags of treasure down on the beach.

Usopp immediately started unpacking them.

"Ooh, this is interesting!" the sniper marveled, "Franky has been focusing on gold ingots and Luffy is just bringing back junk. Some of this might actually be what Nami wants!"

As Zoro emptied the rest of the sacks, he asked, "Everyone else is okay, then?"

Sanji started to complain, "The shitty captain already had to go back to the ship once to get the antidote for the poison. He needed to pee and just took off his suit right here on the island! Thankfully it's a fairly slow-acting poison, and not overly caustic, so we got him back before anything too bad happened."

Zoro sighed and rolled his eyes. They should have known better than to put Luffy in a hazmat suit and expect him to _stay_ in it. He nodded curtly at Usopp and took off back up the mountain.

After a couple more rounds of treasure-hunting, Robin sent a note via the bucket conveyer saying that they had reached the maximum safe weight of treasure to carry on the Sunny. So from now on, the three of them were to completely ignore gold and only grab things that might be more valuable by weight.

Franky and Zoro started bringing back only gemstones and the occasional item of silvery metal that didn't look tarnished. Most of it got sent right back via the bucket system, but once in a while the buckets sent back gold instead, indicating that some of the new items had been kept. A huge pile of their discarded treasure built up at the base of the mountain.

Luffy, meanwhile, had long since lost interest in bringing back 'interesting stuff' and had started playing in the piles instead. Usopp quickly joined him, leaving Sanji to fill and empty out the buckets alone.

Zoro pointed and laughed at the cook's out-of-breath and sweaty state, and immediately a fight broke out between the two of them, leaving Franky as the only Strawhat on the island who remembered their mission.

The cyborg sent a note back to the girls via the bucket relay, and when he got one back, he went to the Mini Merry and made himself comfortable in one of the seats.

"Alright bros, time to break it up," Franky announced a while later. "Cook-bro, Nose-bro, you two are going back to the ship first."

"Why them first? I'm the captain!" Luffy scowled and tilted his head in confusion.

"I had to think about it for a while, but it's like the riddle of the cabbage, the goat, and the wolf, you see? If I leave you with nose-bro, or leave sword-bro with cook-bro, then by the time I came back everything would be on fire. Get it? So I have to split those groups! Plus I want to take cook-bro first so he can start making all of us some food right away. I'm hungry."

Luffy nodded, completely understanding the logic of "I'm hungry," but not seeming to realize that Franky hadn't answered why Usopp was going back to the ship before him, the captain.

"So why does Usopp get to go instead of Luffy?" Zoro asked in his place.

"Zoroooo," Usopp whined, "I have to pee, and Luffy already went!"

"I'm the captain and I say I get to go first!" Luffy declared.

"I'll mutiny," Usopp threatened.

Everyone went quiet for a second, remembering Water Seven.

Grumbling, Usopp disembarked and settled on the beach next to Zoro.

Zoro had to pee too, so he had little sympathy. While they waited he distracted himself by drawing designs in the toxic smoke with the tip of a sheathed sword as the Mini Merry chugged away along with their captain, cook, and shipwright.

After getting a chance to rid themselves of their hazmat suits and do their other business off the sides of Mini Merry, Zoro and Usopp were both feeling much better about the world in general.

When they approached Sunny, the ship rested noticeably lower in the water, but nowhere near as low as Zoro had expected it to be.

Franky must have caught the curious look Zoro sent him, because he answered his unspoken question.

"Remember that we're still on the Grand Line. The Florian Triangle might not have any water or air currents, but Sunny still needs to be able to stand up to Grand Line-level storms once we leave the Triangle."

Zoro and Usopp both nodded in understanding.

When he climbed aboard the Sunny, Zoro found himself in the middle of an argument.

"No. Those are Zoro's," Luffy said flatly.

"Just a few. Maybe just some of the little ones?" Nami wheedled.

"I said no."

"What's going on here?" Zoro interrupted.

"Nami wants to throw your weights overboard," Luffy answered.

"Just temporarily! When we trade in the gold for 10,000 beri notes then I'll loan you enough money to buy them back!"

"What," Zoro ground out, "made you think I'd agree to something like that?"

"I _didn't_ think you'd agree. That's why I was trying to get Luffy to do it before you got back."

"You consider that defending yourself?"

"If you agree to leave all your weights behind…" Nami looked pained, "I'll… I'll reduce the interest on your debt."

"_Fuck_, no," Zoro was furious, "That bullshit debt of yours doesn't even exist in the first place! You made it up!"

"You agreed to the terms of the loan!"

"It turned out that I didn't need the loan!"

"Changing circumstances doesn't void the terms of the verbal contract!" Nami was using fancy words on him again.

"That debt only exists in your head!" Zoro insisted.

"Look, until you get new ones, you can lift weights using sacks of gold instead of iron. Gold is _heavy_, you know."

"I'd consider it, if you hadn't been going behind my back to _throw away my things_."

"What if I took a few percentage points off your debt?"

"This again? How about: you completely forget about this imaginary debt of yours, and I'll _think_ about leaving _one_ of my weights behind. But even then you have to buy me a replacement _for free_ as soon as the treasure is traded in."

"No chance," Nami said stubbornly.

Zoro folded his arms and glared at her. He wasn't budging.

Nami made a noise of pure frustration and stormed away.

Zoro was glad that Sanji lacked the upper body and grip strength to handle Zoro's weights. The cook would have tossed them overboard in a heartbeat as soon as _Nami-swan_ batted her eyelashes at him.

At least Luffy had realized that doing what she asked would be wrong.

Damn it, Nami.

That's when Sanji stepped out of the galley.

"Hey shitheads, dinner's gonna be awhile and you guys stink. Go take a bath already."

It seemed like as good an idea as any. Several of the crew were a little past due for their scheduled baths.

The Strawhat crew had an unofficial rule about bath time – every Devil Fruit user must be accompanied by at least one uncursed crewmate while in the room, in case the fruit user fell into the furo.

Chopper and Luffy were both due for baths, so Usopp and Zoro were recruited to join them.

This left Zoro with the Kiddy Trio.

After Zoro washed off all the grime on the wet bench, he sank into the relaxing heat of the furo to unwind and watch the chaos.

As best Zoro could tell, the other three were playing a game called 'Mermaid Stampede,' but it may as well have been called 'Run around screaming while wearing bubbles.'

The Kiddy Trio dashed back and forth through the room, arms in the air, sometimes skating on bars of soap or setting up obstacles to dodge around, until one of them would point and announce, "Wait, now they're coming from that way!" which started up the screaming and running again.

As long as nobody fell in the furo, Zoro was staying out of it.

Eventually, Franky banged on the door and announced dinner was ready, causing everyone to quickly rinse off the bubbles and dry themselves enough to get dressed.

On their way to supper, Zoro fell into conversation with Luffy.

"I don't like the clocks," Luffy said, interrupting Zoro's thoughts.

"You saw them too? And why not? They didn't seem to be hurting anything."

"I kept trying to bring one back, cuz I thought they were cool, but they kept disappearing whenever I turned around to look at something else."

"I didn't see the treasure-bird either," Zoro said.

"Oh, I did."

"WHAT? You were in a battle and I didn't even know about it?"

"Nuh-uh," Luffy shook his head, "I was ready to fight it and stuff, but the bird just opened one eye, looked at me, and then went back to sleep."

Zoro had no idea what to think about that, "Well, I found a big black ball with smoke pouring out of it," he said, because it seemed like the next thing to mention.

"Sounds weird."

"It was."

Over dinner, the crew that had been to the treasure island gave their report of their findings. No one had any idea what to think of the unconcerned bird, the weird disappearing clocks, or the screaming, smoke-emitting black ball.

"When I was making the antidote, the smoke definitely seemed to be biological in origin," Chopper said, "I would have believed it was dragon's breath just like the Manoans said if Zoro hadn't told us about the ball."

Nobody had any answers.

Another mystery, at the moment, was Nami.

Zoro was well aware that the amount of money from the treasure Nami could bring aboard if Zoro got rid of one of his weights would more than make up for both the so-called 'debt' _and_ the expense of buying him a new one.

When Nami turned down profit, there was something strange happening.

The navigator had a look he couldn't understand when Zoro opened the door to her cartography room.

"I guess there's no avoiding this," she said with a resigned sigh.

"You're not acting like yourself," Zoro replied, "and I need to know why."

Nami sighed and rubbed her temples with ink-stained fingers, "Zoro, a debt… is a bond." She stopped there as if that meant something.

"That doesn't explain anything."

"Yes it does. You're just dim."

"Insulting me isn't-"

"_You threatened to leave_!"

There was ringing silence as the first two Strawhat recruits stared at each other. Zoro slowly starting to understand and Nami with tears of fury starting to form in the corners of her eyes.

"Everyone else might think that you're the most loyal crewmember, but I know better," Nami pushed back the tears before they could fully form through sheer willpower. "I don't know what kind of deal you made with Luffy – it happened before we met. But I know there were _strings attached_. I also know that you're the kind of man who honors his debts, and I'm going to keep you here even if I lose money doing it."

"I don't." Zoro explained carefully, "Acknowledge. Your debt."

"That's too damn bad. It exists, and I'm not letting you go until it's paid."

"I'll throw one of my weights overboard myself, and bring on enough gold to pay whatever stupid amount your greedy witch brain made up," he didn't know whether playing along with her delusions like this was a good idea, but he said it anyway.

Panic flashed over Nami's face, "Zoro…"

"Or you could get it through your head that maybe I want to be here. Maybe I don't want to leave Luffy. Maybe I said what I said _to keep the crew from falling apart_."

They were silent for a minute.

There was an unspoken bond between the first three Strawhats. Luffy, Zoro, and Nami were in some unexplainable way the trio at the core of the group. When Usopp and Robin had left, Zoro hadn't been convinced that they would return. But when Nami had declared her betrayal back in East Blue, Zoro had thrown himself into the water while bound with ropes, just to prove she wasn't willing to let him die. He had trusted her that much.

He was certain of her loyalty, and of Luffy's. But it seemed like Nami had been questioning his own.

"Promise me you'll never leave the crew. Promise me, and I'll forget the whole thing."

"I can't do that," Zoro said, "I swore to chase my ambition no matter what it takes. I don't want to leave, but I will if I have to."

"And that," Nami said, "is the reason I will never let you out of your debt."

That night after his workout, Zoro turned in early to find Luffy already waiting in Zoro's bunk, wrapped tightly in his blanket. Zoro unwound the surprisingly chilly bundle and climbed in, trying not to hiss at the feeling of cold hands running up his back under his shirt.

Since it was Luffy, his metabolism was either on full blast or barely detectible.

"Hey Luffy," Zoro whispered, "Maybe you should go to the girls' room. I think Nami needs you tonight."

"I started out with Nami, Zoro," Luffy replied in as close to a whisper as he ever managed, "she told me tonight that you needed me more."


End file.
